If you’d like to keep in touch, you can find me on LinkedIn or RegenAgvocate.

“TEACHER seeks pupil. Must have an earnest desire to save the world. Apply in person.”

And so begins one of my favorite books of all time, Ishmael by Daniel Quinn, a thought-provoking narrative of our shared assumptions about the world and the wide-ranging implications of our cultural “stories.”

In the role of a wise mentor, Ishmael, a gorilla, imparts wisdom to his eager student, the narrator, inviting introspection. He shares, “Mother Culture, whose voice has been in your ear since the day of your birth, has given you an explanation of how things came to be this way. You know it well; everyone in your culture knows it well…As we make our journey here, we’re going to be reexamining key pieces of that mosaic…And when we’re finished, you’ll have an entirely new perception of the world and of all that’s happened here.”

Ishmael challenges the progressive fragmentation of our culture that began with the agricultural revolution and has led to the fragmentation of thought that has marked the last ten thousand years of human civilization.

According to Ishmael, and as I’ve written about before, our current social and environmental problems are rooted in our disconnection from nature and the belief that it’s our job to dominate nature and make it subservient to our will. He explains the myth that evolution ended with humans and the dire consequences of perceiving ourselves as “outlaws” with permission to live outside the laws of nature.

“Everyone in your culture knows this. Man was born to turn the world into paradise, but tragically he was born flawed. And so his paradise has always been spoiled by stupidty, greed, destructiveness, and shortsightedness.”

And so begins the deep cultural inquiry between Ishmael and the narrator, us.

Ishamael poses to the narrator: “On the basis of my history, what subject would you say I was best qualified to teach?” Absent an answer, Ishmael replies, “My subject is ‘captivity.’”

He’s not referring to the bars of his cage but those of the world itself.

“Among the people of your culture, which want to destroy the world?” he asks. The narrator responds, “As far as I know, no one specifically wants to destroy the world.”

“And yet you do destroy it, each of you. Each of you contributes daily to the destruction of the world”

“Yes, that’s so.”

“Why don’t you stop?”

“Frankly, we don’t know how.”

“You’re captives of a civilization system that more or less compels you to go on destroying the world in order to live.”

“Yes - that’s the way it seems.”

But do we know we’re captives of this myth? Are we destined to destroy the world and stay cogs within our own industrialized, factory farm?

“There’s nothing fundamentally wrong with people. Given a story to enact that puts them in accord with the world, they will live in accord with the world. But given a story to enact that puts them at odds with the world, as yours does, they will live at odds with the world. Given a story to enact in which they are the lords of the world, they will act like lords of the world. And, given a story to enact in which the world is a foe to be conquered, they will conquer it like a foe, and one day, inevitably, their foe will lie bleeding to death at their feet, as the world is now.”

And here lies my point for this final post: no individual can change culture, yet culture can’t change without individual changes. With collective discernment and a new story, we can change.

“People can’t just give up a story. That’s what the kids tried to do in the sixties and seventies. They tried to stop living like Takers, but there was no other way for them to live. They failed because you can’t just stop being in a story, you have to have another story to be in.”

Ishmael nodded. “And if there is such a story, people should hear about it?”

“Yes, they should.”

“Do you think they want to hear about it?”

“I don’t know. I don’t think you can start wanting something till you know it exists.”

“Very true.”

There’s no one right way to free ourselves from the imprisonment of our cultural dysfunction; there’s no one right way to live.

But Ishmael challenges the belief that we are separate from nature and other species. By opening us to a different dialogue of our culture, it creates an opening for us to reach forward, change, and start new stories that are more peaceful and harmonious with the rest of the world.

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We’re all teachers; we’re all pupils, and I daresay most of us have an earnest desire to collectively work to protect, regenerate, and save the world.

May we feel called to rethink our position in nature’s web and construct new stories for the betterment of humanity and all life on Earth.

It’s been a pleasure sharing space with you at The Regeneration. Please stay in touch and share how you’re creating a new story within yourself and your community.

Until we meet again,

Meg

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Quotes to ponder:

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It’s impossible to measure coastlines and borders. In a phenomenon dubbed the “coastline paradox,” the measured length of coastlines and other natural objects depend on the level of detail or scale at which it was observed.

If I measure a coastline or a border from a satellite, for example, I’d get a vastly different number than if I were to pace around the edge on foot. As shown in the above video, halving the ruler increases the length of Great Britain’s coastline. In other words, the smaller the ruler, the longer the length.

The coastline paradox was first discovered in the 1950s by mathematician, Lewis Fry Richardson, while trying to predict the likelihood of war between two countries based on the length and nature of their common border.

To test his theory, he examined different borders in Europe and discovered peculiar disagreements. The Portuguese claimed their border with Spain measured 1,214 km, whereas the Spaniards believed it was only 987 km. Similarly, the reported length of the border between the Netherlands and Belgium varied between 380 km and 449 km. 

This trend of discrepancies, or “fractals,” extends to the behavior of many other natural phenomena and doesn’t even consider that Earth is in constant flux, always transforming itself anew.

Math, and our efforts to quantify and simplify everything, are dull tools to wield in an attempt to understand this complex planet.

For example, methane. It’s the boogieman of greenhouse gases, claimed to be worse than carbon dioxide due to its comparative global warming potential. When many climate-concerned people hear this, they broadly swath methane, and anything that produces it, as planet-enemy number one.

They subsequently learn that cattle produce methane during enteric fermentation, the process of microbial fermentation in the digestive system of ruminant animals, where microorganisms break down complex carbohydrates into simpler compounds, such as volatile fatty acids and gases like methane.

This gas in the form of cow “burps” is increasingly the subject of attention for climate activists. Methane has become the number one argument in recent calls to end all livestock farming in favor of “rewilding” landscapes to restore populations of wild animals.

On the surface, it seems to make sense - who doesn’t want fewer boogiemen and more wild animals in the world?

But if we’re using methane emissions as our ruler for a “healthy planet,” then we’ll still be at war with a “rewilded” world because methane emissions would not necessarily decrease.1

The animals that would replace cattle (e.g. deer, moose, elk, wildebeest, giraffes, etc.) are also methane-producing ruminant animals.

So, we find ourselves in yet another paradox, letting a math equation decide what metrics matter and whether or not a species that have roamed the planet for millions of years should live or die.

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This is further exacerbated when we look at the Sudd Wetland in South Sudan.

The South Sudanese wetland is one of the largest freshwater ecosystems in the world, covering about 22,000 square miles. In 2019, however, Yale360 reported that “researchers estimate that wetlands in Africa’s tropics could account for up to a third of the spike in global methane emissions between 2010 and 2016, with most of this coming from the Sudd.”

If we’re still using methane as our ruler, we should eliminate this methane source, too, right?

“The Sudd is home to thousands of crocodiles, hippos, elephants, and zebras, as well as the majority of the world’s shoebill storks. It also sustains one of the world’s largest mammal migrations, in which around 1.3 million antelope — comprising white-eared kob, tiang, and Mongalla gazelle — move each year from the Sudd east across hundreds of miles of open grasslands to Gambella in Ethiopia.”

Advocating for ecocide in order to reduce one metric - methane - is myopic and dangerous.

Fixating on only the easily quantifiable at the expense of a planet full of things that are inherently resistant to reductionistic measurements is the same industrialized, monoculture thinking that got us into this climate crisis in the first place.

Our obsession with numbers, oversimplification, and objectification of nature treats the world as if it “were a giant spreadsheet which only needs to be balanced correctly”2 so we can go about business-as-usual without the methane or carbon.

Or worse.

These calls to be obsessed with quantification and technocratic “solutioneering” disconnect us from life itself, disenfranchise us from a life within ecology rather than further away from us, and leave us as nothing more than servants of debt and cogs in a machine of promissory innovation. We’ll lose access to one of the most nutrient-dense foods we can eat and directly and indirectly condone the bullying of those who both feed us and steward this planet we call home.

As Paul Kingsnorth notes:

“If you can’t read or understand the ‘peer-reviewed science’ then you are open to being intimidated into fearful silence by those who can, or claim they can. And those people - drawn, as all green ‘thought leaders’ are, from the upper strata of society - will bring with them a worldview which treats the mass of humanity like so many cattle to be herded into the sustainable, zero-carbon pen.”

Because we tend to view our world through the scientific method alone doesn’t mean that relationships between things are nonexistent, that our world can be understood in a vacuum, and that we can eliminate methane-emitting cattle that are critical to some of the most biodiverse ecosystems on the planet.

We can continue to advance science; we can continue measuring things, but we have to acknowledge how our “datafication” can reduce our worldview. These tools and metrics represent one part of our story, not the story.

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While we can’t “peer-review” our intuition and sense of belonging to the world, we also can’t continue to use our addiction to facts and figures and numbers as a shield from our discomfort with complexity, uncertainty, and worst of all, complicity.

Livestock can go beyond methane and help regenerate livelihoods, local economies, and restore and maintain optimal health, biodiversity, and carbon sequestration of our agro-ecosystems.

We can amplify these nature-based solutions that benefit our planet beyond carbon and recouple humans into ecosystems as stewards.

And instead of spending our lives measuring coastlines only to realize it’s impossible, we can dig our toes into them - feel them - and embrace the complexity of this planet we call home.

Disclaimer: The Regeneration Weekly receives no compensation or kickbacks for brand features - we are simply showcasing great new regenerative products.

If you have any products you would like to see featured, please respond to this newsletter or send an email to meg(at)soil.works

The Regeneration is brought to you by Grassroots Carbon, a regenerative carbon credit provider incentivizing grassland regeneration at scale. Are you a rancher interested in being paid to sequester carbon? Learn more here. Are you interested in buying carbon credits that support regeneration and impacts beyond carbon? Learn more here.

From the high costs of doing business to being at the mercy of increasingly uncontrollable forces of nature, farmers and ranchers are no strangers to hardship.

The financial risks are high, crop prices are always fluctuating, and input costs continue to rise.

Predators might overtake prized livestock and pests might feast on rows of tomorrow’s crops.

The physical work taxes the body and while weather is always unpredictable, climate change has caused unprecedented droughts, flooding, storms, and freezes.

Coupled with the isolating nature of farming and ranching, it’s no wonder that these are some of the country’s most stressful occupations.

Many typical consumers who’ve never stepped foot on a farm would guess terminal illness or a farm accident would consign farmers to an early grave but ask many farmers to share their greatest fear and expect to hear an answer that harkens back to an overwhelming amount of stress.

Years of trying to protect their family land from encroaching banks or governments, unprecedented climate and market challenges, and vitriol from well-meaning, yet often misinformed consumers wear them down despite their love of farming.

A 2018 study from the University of Iowa found that between 1992 and 2010, farmers and ranchers had a rate of suicide that was, on average, 3.5 times that of the general population. A 2022 poll from the American Farm Bureau Federation found that 61% of farmers and farm workers are experiencing more stress and mental health challenges compared to the year prior.

Farmers of color face even more stress and health risks.

In 2021, the USDA announced $25 million to state Farm and Ranch Stress Assistance Networks (FRSAN) to build crisis hotlines, establish anti-suicide training, and offer free or low-cost counseling, among other services.

But Lori Mercer, a Farm Aid hotline operator, shares that getting farmers to use these services is “just the tip of an iceberg. Most don’t reach out because of their streak of independence and pull-yourself-up-by-the-bootstraps mentality.”

Every day, farmers bear the burden of their crops and livestock, land, families, and communities. Now they also bear the burden of climate change.

The question then becomes: are farmers doomed to buckle under the weight of all of this stress? Is there a better way?

Enter regenerative agriculture.

Research has shown that farmers’ job satisfaction—and hence their emotional well-being—is often higher when they employ more sustainable, non-extractive practices, said Michael R. Rossmann, Ph.D., an Iowa farmer and agricultural psychologist.

Researchers from Iowa State University found that sustainable farmers reported “improved physical health, reduced job stress, more challenging and satisfying work activities, and more satisfying family and community relations”—all potential boons to their mental health.

“When you feel you are farming in a way that benefits consumers and sustains the resources needed to farm, you feel satisfaction,” Rosmann said. “It’s hard to change, but if farmers don’t, they’re going to lose out.”

As the percentage of people who work in agriculture continues to drop, our food system and planetary health can’t afford to lose any more farmers and ranchers.

A 2021 study of regenerative and conventional graziers concluded the following:

• Those practicing regenerative farming have higher eudaimonic well-being when compared with other farmers of similar farm type, age, and gender

• Regenerative farmers scored much higher on measures of farmer self-efficacy (coping and optimism)

• Regenerative farmers were more satisfied with their health compared to other farmers

Regenerative agriculture is not only about 78% more profitable than the industrial model, but it’s also healthier for the farmer, the planet, and everything in it.

So what’s stopping farmers from flocking to regenerative agriculture?

Many factors, one being the lack of community support. Many farmers view regenerative practices as risky or in conflict with what is normally accepted as farming practices.

My local rancher, Thomas Locke of Bois d’Arc Meat Co., once told me:

“The biggest challenge I think any group trying to scale regenerative beef will face is convincing farmers to adopt the practice. Folks out here would rather fail together than succeed alone. No one wants to be the black sheep, and when folks are set in their ways, adopting a big learning curve is close to impossible. It is entirely possible, especially by targeting younger farmers, and people who will inherit the land and still want to farm. The person communicating all of this, though, needs to be someone they trust. That's really important.”

We’re at a precipice. Farming stress is at an all-time high and climate change and its subsequent disasters are accelerating. 

But more folks are demystifying regenerative practices. More farmers and ranchers are adopting them and reporting increased profits, greater yields, and, perhaps most importantly, higher well-being.

The mental health of our food producers matters. It’s time we encourage and remove barriers to giving them access to regenerative (in every aspect of the word) support.

Here are a few ways we can support farmer and rancher mental health:

1. Raise awareness: Start by raising awareness about the mental health challenges faced by farmers. Educate yourself and others about the unique stressors farmers experience, such as financial uncertainty, isolation, and unpredictable weather conditions. Advocate for increased funding for mental health services in rural areas, improved access to healthcare, and reduced stigma surrounding mental health in the farming community.

2. Encourage open communication: Create a safe and non-judgmental space where farmers can openly discuss their mental health concerns. Encourage them to share their experiences and feelings with trusted friends, family members, or mental health professionals. The American Farm Bureau’s Farm State of Mind resources remind produces: “A healthy farm or ranch is nothing without a healthy you.”

3. Connect farmers with resources: Provide farmers with information about mental health resources available in their community. This can include mental health helplines, support groups, counseling services, or online resources specifically tailored to the farming community. The Good Neighbor Project offers great ideas to support folks in rural and agricultural communities.

4. Foster social connections: Combat feelings of isolation by facilitating social connections among farmers. Encourage the formation of local support groups, agricultural networks, or online communities where farmers can share experiences, offer support, and exchange knowledge.

5. Financial support and education: Assist farmers in accessing financial resources and support programs that can help alleviate some of the financial stress associated with farming. This could involve connecting them with agricultural organizations, government programs, or financial advisors who can provide guidance on managing finances effectively. FarmRaise is another great example of this.

6. Offer practical assistance: Offer practical assistance to farmers when possible, such as helping with farm tasks or connecting them with community resources or just listening. Small gestures of support and treating each other as fellow humans with feelings, not faceless commodities, can make a significant difference.

7. And last, but certainly not least, let’s remember to never curse a farmer with a fork in our mouths.

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Mental Health Resources

If you or someone you know needs immediate mental health support, there are a number of national hotlines available:

• Farm Aid Hotline: 800-FARM-AID (327-6243) Monday-Friday 9 a.m. – 5 p.m. ET

• National Suicide Prevention Lifeline: 800-273-TALK (8255) 24/7

• 211, a comprehensive hotline that connects callers with local resources

• 911 in an emergency

• The Rural Health Information Hub also maintains a detailed page dedicated to farmer mental health and suicide prevention.

• American Farm Bureau Federation Farm State of Mind Resource Directory is a page connecting producers with aid and other farmers to help navigate stress and mental challenges in rural and farm communities.

Disclaimer: The Regeneration Weekly receives no compensation or kickbacks for brand features - we are simply showcasing great new regenerative products.

If you have any products you would like to see featured, please respond to this newsletter or send an email to meg(at)soil.works

The Regeneration is brought to you by Grassroots Carbon, a regenerative carbon credit provider incentivizing grassland regeneration at scale. Are you a rancher interested in being paid to sequester carbon? Learn more here. Are you interested in buying carbon credits that support regeneration and impacts beyond carbon? Learn more here.

Grasslands, also known as prairies, savannas, or steppes, are vast, open ecosystems dominated by grasses and other herbaceous plants, with scattered trees and shrubs. They cover about one-quarter of the earth's land area and support diverse communities of wildlife, including large herbivores like bison, antelope, and elk, as well as predators like wolves and cougars.

Grasslands are important for many reasons, both ecological and economic. Here are some of the key ways in which grasslands contribute to our planet's health and well-being:

1. Carbon sequestration:

Grasslands are highly efficient at capturing and storing carbon dioxide from the atmosphere in their deep-rooted grasses and soil. Recent studies show that they’re more reliable carbon sinks than forests, making them important carbon sinks and critical in the fight against climate change.

2. Biodiversity:

Grasslands are home to a diverse array of plant and animal species, many of which are threatened or endangered. For example, the North American prairie once supported vast herds of bison, but today less than 1% of the original grassland remains, and the bison is now considered a species of conservation concern. Grasslands also support a variety of grassland birds, such as the greater prairie chicken and the grasshopper sparrow.

3. Soil conservation:

Healthy grasslands with diverse plant species help to prevent soil erosion by holding soil in place with their deep root systems, which can penetrate up to 10 feet deep. They also improve soil quality by increasing organic matter and soil nutrients.

4. Water conservation:

Grasslands recharge groundwater and maintain water quality by absorbing rainwater, increasing water infiltration rates, and filtering out pollutants. They also regulate the water cycle by absorbing and releasing water at different rates, helping to prevent floods and droughts.

5. Economic value:

Grasslands are important for agriculture, providing grazing land for livestock and habitat for pollinators. They are also important for recreation and tourism, with many visitors flocking to see the iconic landscapes of the Serengeti, the Great Plains, or the Australian Outback.

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Given their ecological and economic importance, it is critical that we protect and conserve grasslands for future generations. One way to do this is through regenerative livestock management.

Livestock, such as cattle, sheep, and goats, have been raised on grasslands for thousands of years. In fact, many grassland ecosystems have evolved to depend on large herbivores to maintain their ecological balance. Grazing can help to stimulate plant growth, increase biodiversity, and promote nutrient cycling in the soil.

However, if livestock are not managed properly, overgrazing can occur, leading to soil erosion, reduced plant productivity, and loss of biodiversity. Overgrazing can also release carbon stored in the soil, contributing to climate change.

Therefore, it is important to adopt sustainable grazing practices that balance the needs of livestock and grassland ecosystems. Here are some examples of regenerative livestock management practices:

1. Rotational grazing:

Rotational grazing involves dividing a pasture into smaller paddocks and moving livestock from one paddock to another on a regular basis. This allows grasses to recover between grazing periods and promotes even distribution of manure and urine, which can fertilize the soil.

2. Mixed-species grazing:

Mixed-species grazing involves grazing different types of livestock together, such as cattle, sheep, and goats. This can help to distribute grazing pressure more evenly across the landscape, promoting biodiversity and reducing overgrazing.

3. Resting periods:

Resting periods involve allowing a pasture to rest for a period of time without grazing. This allows grasses to recover, promotes the growth of deep-rooted perennial plants, which can store carbon deeper in the soil profile, where it is less likely to be released into the atmosphere, and increases plant diversity.

4. Grazing management planning:

Grazing management planning involves developing a comprehensive plan for grazing that takes into account the needs of the grassland ecosystem, livestock, and other stakeholders. This plan may involve monitoring plant growth and soil health, adjusting grazing intensity and duration, and incorporating other land management practices such as prescribed burning or invasive species control. While I’ve seen many grazing plans on the back of discarded pizza boxes, tools such as PastureMap simplify grazing management, forage forecasting, and record keeping.

5. Conservation grazing:

Conservation grazing involves using livestock to manage grasslands for conservation purposes, such as restoring degraded grasslands or maintaining habitat for rare or endangered species. This can be done in partnership with conservation organizations or government agencies. As Chad Ellis of Texas Agricultural Land Trust has said, however, “Conservation without compensation ends the conversation.” Incentivizing farmers and ranchers must address common barriers ranchers face when considering grazing management alternatives. While grants exist, many ranchers now turn to carbon credit programs like those from Grassroots Carbon to offset infrastructure costs and generate additional revenue for carbon sequestration and the many ecosystem services that regenerative management provides.

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Sustainable livestock management can have many benefits for both grassland ecosystems and livestock producers. By promoting healthy grasslands, livestock can help to sequester carbon, conserve water and soil, and maintain biodiversity. Livestock can also provide a source of income and food for people living in or near grassland ecosystems.

In addition to regenerative livestock management, other conservation strategies may be necessary to protect and restore grassland ecosystems. These may include restoring fire regimes, controlling invasive species, and protecting key habitat areas through land acquisition or conservation easements.

Grasslands are critically important ecosystems that provide a range of ecological and economic benefits. Grazing animals are the linchpin in maintaining healthy grasslands and promoting biodiversity, while also providing important economic benefits for livestock producers. However, it is important to balance the needs of grassland ecosystems with the needs of livestock and to adopt grazing practices that are appropriate for each specific ecosystem. By working together to protect and conserve grasslands, we can ensure that these important ecosystems continue to provide benefits for generations to come.

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Read:

Ecosystem management using livestock: embracing diversity and respecting ecological principles by Rountree, et al. This new paper highlights the importance of 1) the variability of the ecological context in which livestock systems operate, and how this can both limit and stimulate the potential of animal production, 2) integrating agro-ecological principles, such as improved circularity and minimized feed-food competition, and 3) the positive ecosystem contributions of well-managed livestock and how these are affected by various management strategies.

Watch:

Texas Cowboys Turn to Carbon Capture Cattle by Consensus Digital Media. Watch a regenerative rancher in action. This video highlights Texas rancher and CEO, Travis Krause, who is currently enrolled in the Grassroots Carbon program to implement regenerative grazing practices to restore grasslands. In his words, “If we restore just half of the U.S. grasslands, we can sequester half to over a billion tons of CO2 per year. For my son and for future generations, that's a massive difference. That's getting back to that natural carbon sink, that's working with nature, improving rural areas, improving the food supply. I was in Houston during Hurricane Harvey; I know what happens when you pave over a grassland.”

Listen:

Collaborative, Regenerative Economy by We Are Carbon. "I think that's one of the realisations over the last decade - that it looks like humanity is not heading for a very healthy course. People are seeing that by the destruction of our ecosystems, the amount of mental health problems in our societies, the power plays in politics. We need a transition. To go from capitalism, individualism, extractivism, towards becoming more symbiotic with nature and each other. We call that a regenerative network. We see people building big pieces of this puzzle that once clicked together are potentially going to completely shift humanity to a different way of operating,” says Daan Gorter of Gaianet, a global community of regenerative changemakers. Tune in to learn more about this perspective on how we can collectively regenerate ourselves, our economy, and our planet.

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Disclaimer: The Regeneration Weekly receives no compensation or kickbacks for brand features - we are simply showcasing great new regenerative products.

If you have any products you would like to see featured, please respond to this newsletter or send an email to meg(at)soil.works

The Regeneration is brought to you by Grassroots Carbon, a regenerative carbon credit provider incentivizing grassland regeneration at scale. Are you a rancher interested in being paid to sequester carbon? Learn more here. Are you interested in buying carbon credits that support regeneration and impacts beyond carbon? Learn more here.

“Scientists are worried about the rise in methane emissions as the world heats up and ‘cows in particular’ are to blame,” says a recent article in Fortune.

But this article (like many others in recent media) fails to mention that methane produced biogenically is a part of the earth’s natural system and is fundamentally different than carbon dioxide and emissions from fossil fuels.

As clearly explained in this CLEAR Center article and accompanying Rethinking Methane video, biogenic methane (from cattle), which is derived from atmospheric carbon, is a short-lived flow gas that lasts in our atmosphere for about 12 years, whereas carbon dioxide is a stock gas that accumulates in our atmosphere for approximately 1,000 years. The initial emission pulse of methane creates a warming effect. Indeed, methane is a potent greenhouse gas with a warming potential that can’t be ignored.

However, given that methane is a flow gas, if its emission rate stabilizes, it will ultimately be destroyed at the same rate that it is produced and thus will not increase warming. If methane emissions decrease, cooling will occur. 

By contrast, every time you burn fossil fuels, the released CO2 tops off the cumulative CO2 stock that has been gathering for the past 1,000 years. In other words, even if CO2 emissions decline, warming will continue because the previously released CO2 (over the past 1,000 years) remains in the atmosphere.        

In elucidating how biogenic methane recycles carbon, Mitloehner’s team explains:

“As part of the biogenic carbon cycle, plants absorb carbon dioxide, and through the process of photosynthesis, they harness the energy of the sun to produce carbohydrates such as cellulose. Indigestible by humans . . . ruminant animals . . .  break it down in their rumens, taking the carbon that makes up the cellulose they consume and emitting a portion as methane, which is CH4 (note the carbon molecule). After about 12 years, the methane is converted into carbon dioxide through hydroxyl oxidation. That carbon is the same carbon that was in the air prior to being consumed by an animal. It is recycled carbon.”

But grouping livestock emissions within those from fossil fuels leads to false conclusions about livestock’s climate impact.

As revealed in a report from Climate TRACE, much of the oil and gas sector has underreported their emissions. With our scarce means of holding sector participants accountable, the report states that the sector’s emissions can be as much as THREE TIMES HIGHER than originally published.

Comparing livestock emissions with those from fossil fuels is not only a red herring for the oil and gas sector to continue business-as-usual, but it also falsely vilifies a nutrient-dense, traditional food and distracts us from solving our biggest problem: our addiction to fossil fuels.

Scapegoating and eliminating livestock without regard for how food is produced does nothing to encourage better earth stewardship.

We don’t have a livestock problem, we have a farming problem. Since the era of agriculture where then-Secretary Earl Butz told farmers to get big or get out, our food production system has focused on one goal alone: yield.

As a result, our yield-obsessed food system has compromised environmental outcomes, food security, quality, and safety, and farmers’ mental health and access to reasonable income.

Swapping out meat and other animal foods for plant-based burgers and other meat substitutes won’t fix the underlying problems in our food system. Telling consumers to just switch out meat for substitutes would be like telling consumers to simply install different upholstery in their vehicles instead of exploring ways to reduce their fossil fuel dependence.

To improve agriculture’s relationship with the environment and human health, we need to encourage farmers to adopt different practices throughout the entire system - not just in livestock production. Fake meat companies claim their soy burgers can save the planet yet fail to provide consumers with any information about how those soybeans were grown. Did farmers use cover cropping? No-till drilling? An abundance of chemicals like pesticides and herbicides?

Regenerative agriculture can play a key role in methane reduction

In healthy soils that are part of vibrant regenerative ecosystems incorporating rotational grazing and avoiding agricultural chemicals and tillage, methanotrophic bacteria help consume methane expelled by ruminants. Josh Tickell in Kiss The Ground says, “The Earth has a number of methane-balancing mechanisms that include soil-based methanotrophic bacteria that absorb methane produced by grazing ruminants.”

Allen Williams further explains that there were hundreds of millions of grazing ruminants for several thousand years without a methane problem. CAFOs, monocultures, pesticides, fungicides, herbicides, synthetic fertilizers, and tillage have degraded our soil and eliminated methanotrophs that digest methane. Furthermore, because synthetic nitrogen fertilizer production (through fracking) generates as much methane as CAFOs, crops grown with such fertilizers are arguably a more significant source of methane than CAFO beef.

Cattle have been disproportionately blamed for methane emissions and the impact on global warming from ruminant methane has been substantially exaggerated. We cannot overwhelmingly point to all cows as methane culprits without considering how they are being raised and without honestly evaluating how much methane is produced by fossil fuels, rice farming, or synthetic fertilizers used for crops. 

Ponder:

An excerpt from FS (Farnam Street) Sunday Brain Food newsletter. “We tend to think that what we think is true. And because we think something is true, we ignore information that might tell us it’s not true. 

Charles Darwin deliberately looked for thoughts that disagreed with his own.  He wrote, ‘Whenever a published fact, a new observation or thought came across me, which was opposed to my general results, to make a memorandum of it without fail and at once; for I had found by experience that such facts and thoughts were far more apt to escape from memory than favorable ones.’

Darwin was out for truth, not to confirm his view of the world.”

Read: 

How the Environmental Movement Can Find Its Way Again by Charles Eisenstein. “The ecological crisis and the spiritual crisis that we call “mental health” share a common source: denial of earth as a living being, worthy of love, worthy of service. The conservationist draws from a well of truth: that the purpose of a human being is to participate in the flourishing of life. To serve with. Sundered from that purpose, we inevitably become sick. That inner sickness, that soul sickness, reflects the outer sickness of ecosystems. Could there ultimately be any doubt that the global climate reflects the social climate, the political climate, the economic climate, and the psychic climate?”

Listen:

Sara Place on the Meet Your Herdmates Sodcast There are many people who know something about ruminant animal agriculture and the essential role it plays in meeting the needs of today’s world and the world of 2050. Sara Place, Ph.D. is one such expert. Tune into this podcast to learn the role of ruminants in a sustainable future.

Disclaimer: The Regeneration Weekly receives no compensation or kickbacks for brand features - we are simply showcasing great new regenerative products.

If you have any products you would like to see featured, please respond to this newsletter or send an email to meg(at)soil.works

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Climate change significantly impacts the survival rate of plant and animal species. Our changing climate and resulting weather extremes make many species’ natural habitats hostile or uninhabitable, causing biodiversity loss and accelerating our rate of climate change.

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Why is biodiversity important to ecosystems and our future?

Different species fulfill important roles in every ecosystem. In ecosystems that have a variety of species that can do any given function, the ecosystem is more resilient - it’s able to respond to disturbances like disease or fire without totally collapsing. What looks like redundancy is insurance.

Ecosystems with limited diversity, including monocultures, are more prone to disease and other disasters than natural ones.

For too long ecosystems have been treated like machines that will continue to work so long as basic conditions are met. For example, if we deem one species as undesirable, we remove that species and replace it with commercially valuable species that can be harvested at constant, more predictable rates. Yet this ignores the complexity of nature and the importance of biodiversity, resulting in catastrophic consequences.

We degrade our biodiversity through urbanization, pollution, deforestation, etc., and the rate of species extinctions is accelerating.

“With biodiversity loss, we not only lose nature, but we also lose some of our best defenses against climate change,’ said Myron Peck, who leads the Department of Coastal Systems at the Royal Netherlands Institute for Sea Research (NIOZ). 

“Our oceans, forests, peat bogs, and wetlands all act as natural carbon sinks, absorbing harmful carbon from the atmosphere.”

To tackle climate change, we must also tackle biodiversity loss.

We see this relationship firsthand with our work in regenerative agriculture. Soils that support diverse ecosystems, as Andy Hector recently reported in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, can “generate soils that are richer in plant nutrients and more productive in plant biomass and that store more carbon.”

The more carbon we can capture and store in the soil, the more the Earth can regulate GHG levels in the atmosphere, leading to a more stable climate.

Why does biodiversity matter to people?

Biodiversity is the backbone of the continued existence of our species and planet. Remove the backbone, and everything crumbles - our climate, food systems, weather, economies, communities, and ways of life.

Humans depend on the functions performed by diverse ecosystems. They produce oxygen, purify and detoxify the air and water, store and cycle fresh water, form topsoil, prevent erosion, regulate the climate, and produce raw materials, foods, and medicines.

Technology can’t outcompete nature because technology depends on nature.

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Some economic and social arguments further illustrate the importance of biodiversity:

• The value of the world’s ecosystem services has been (conservatively) estimated at $33 trillion per year.

• The state of New York discovered that wetlands and other natural systems in the watershed accomplished water purification and filtration that would require an $8 billion water treatment plant to replace. Protecting and remediating these natural systems cost much less.

• Over 75% of staple food crops and 90% of flowering plants worldwide depend on pollination by insects and other animals. Between 100,000 and 200,000 species of animals act as pollinators, and their populations are declining.

• Crop diversity is substantially falling as agri-business is taking over food production from small family operations that once supplied our population. The practice of saving seeds is being abandoned in favor of hybrid varieties that require reseeding every year and large quantities of chemicals decreasing the self-sufficiency of farmers worldwide and reducing the genetic diversity of food crops making them more susceptible to disease and pest outbreaks.

• Virtually all natural and pharmaceutical medicines are composed of (or derived from) natural compounds of plants, fungi, microbes, and animals. In areas of severe environmental degradation, many species with known or even unknown healing properties are threatened by extinction.

• The highly biodiverse coastal environment of British Columbia contributes 7-8% to the provincial GDP.

Plants, animals, and people have value in and of themselves, and preserving biodiversity not only mitigates climate change but is also an important investment in our future.

Regenerative agriculture can build biodiversity

Regenerative practices not only increase the health of our soil and land, but also attract more biodiversity, build climate resilience, manage our GHG levels, and slow the rate of climate change.

More corporations today are recognizing the impact of regenerative agriculture for their carbon drawdown capabilities, and, in turn, financially supporting farmers to adopt such practices, and over 100 countries have laws or policies in place that require or enable the use of biodiversity offsets.

If we continue to encourage and support the transition to regenerative agriculture, we can indeed tackle climate change and biodiversity loss simultaneously.

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Disclaimer: The Regeneration Weekly receives no compensation or kickbacks for brand features - we are simply showcasing great new regenerative products.

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The Regeneration is brought to you by Soilworks | Wholesome Meats | Cream Co. Meats | Grassroots Carbon | Grazing Lands | RangeWard

Regenerative grazing - also referred to as adaptive grazing, multi-paddock grazing, management-intensive grazing, holistic planned grazing, mob grazing, cell grazing, and rotational or controlled grazing - is a system that producers use to accomplish a variety of management goals. 

Early adopters describe it simply as becoming professional grass growers.

Noble Research Institute describes it as the mindset to proactively plan and actively manage grazing events: “grazing the appropriate amount of leaf production at the optimal time, encouraging the grazing livestock to uniformly utilize the pasture or paddock, and managing grazing to maintain ample residual and allow full recovery of grazed plants before the next grazing event.”

Regenerative grazing ultimately is a process that ranchers continuously adjust, based on conditions and time, and daily activity to ensure that the grazing impact synchronizes with the environment, climate, and ecosystems of their ranch.

Dr. Allen Williams of Understanding Ag says, “It begins with the life of the soil and then translates to life above. I first think: ‘How I am feeding the microbes underneath my feet?’ because they’re critically important to me and my success as a rancher.”

“Then, I'm thinking about the plants: Am I grazing in a way that's going to benefit my plants and allow them to recover more rapidly from the grazing impact? So we can have optimum nutrient cycling and facilitate the water cycle through those plants while maximizing photosynthetic capture?”

How is this different than traditional, continuous grazing systems?

Traditional systems are often a one-size-fits-most, prescription, meaning that many farmers repeat the same practices day in, and day out. 

But nature isn’t static. Everything is constantly changing and shifting. Implementing a generalized prescription in a literal field of nuance limits forage production, ecosystem biodiversity, the ability to continuously build carbon and organic matter in our soils, and our ability to absorb and retain water from natural precipitation or applied irrigation.

Conventional grazing practices often cap the total potential for biomass production, leading many ranchers and farmers to apply external fertility to increase forage. With regenerative grazing, however, land stewards can steadily and incrementally improve and increase forage biomass production without buying and applying fertility because it is applied through the very animals that are actively grazing in a manner that nature does it with wild ruminants (e.g. grazing animals in grasslands).

Compared to a continuous grazing system where livestock have free access to an entire pasture, livestock graze their favorite forages and leave other ones ungrazed. Similar to you and me, livestock have favorite foods. A pasture isn’t just a monoculture of a single grass species - it’s many different species of plants. When given continuous access to an entire pasture, they will overgraze and kill their favorite plants, and avoid the ones they dislike. Many species will diminish and even drop out of the ecosystem entirely.

“A crucial aspect of growing grass in the desert is the increased microbial stimulation resulting from the large grazing ruminants and the fertility they apply through their manure and urine,” says Alejandro Carrillo, a regenerative rancher regenerating 30,000 acres of the Chihuahuan Desert. “This fertility helps stimulate the soil biology and, in return, stimulates the growth of new grasses from the latent seed bank.” Regenerative practices have also increased his “ranch’s water infiltration rate to 18-20 inches per hour; the neighboring ranch has an infiltration rate of only two inches per hour.”

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Why does regenerative grazing work so well?

In short, adaptive graziers aim to take no more than the top half of the existing forage in each paddock and leave the remaining half. Since plants rely on photosynthesis to grow. The more leaf surface area that a plant has, the faster it can regrow after a grazing period. By ensuring that the cattle only take the top half of a pasture, producers can ensure that those plants will rebound during the rest period. As plants photosynthesize sunlight, they expand their root systems. Healthy root systems help those plants transmit nutrients into the soil to feed microbial life. The more abundant a root system is, the healthier the soil will be, supercharging the plant’s ability to sequester carbon.

Plants use photosynthesis to pull carbon out of the air and turn it into simple sugars that feed the plant, its roots, and the surrounding soil microorganisms, mainly soil fungi, and to a lesser extent, bacteria, protozoa, and nematodes. These microorganisms “lock up” the carbon in the soil in the form of recalcitrant organic matter or they store it within their bodies, such as in fungal networks.

Regenerative grazing spreads manure more evenly through a pasture as cattle graze through each section in a controlled manner. Manure and urine feed microbial life in the soil, supporting healthy soil and better plant growth. Healthier plants absorb atmospheric carbon and pump it down into the soil where it can be stored for hundreds to thousands of years by soil microorganisms, as described in the diagram below.

A common question in regard to alternative grazing methods is whether or not it requires more or less land for the same amount of cattle.

“Regenerative grazing doesn't require more land. We are actually far more productive on the same acres,” Williams says. “Over time, it requires less land without all of the purchased and added inputs.”

Many regenerative graziers also report that it takes far less time to rotate animals to new pasture than most people think. With portable, temporary fencing options like those from RangeWard, graziers can more easily turn cattle out onto fresh pasture. Livestock quickly adapt to the new grazing system and often line up, eagerly waiting to move to the next pasture. It’s a low-stress environment and once they become accustomed to working with people, the livestock are less flighty than in continuous grazing operations.

While regenerative grazing alone is not a panacea to mitigate climate change, well-planned grazing, which incorporates perennial plants and allocates time for the plant to rest, contributes to increased soil organic matter and soil carbon storage. This makes regenerative grazing a powerful, natural climate solution. Beyond carbon drawdown, regenerative grazing improves ecosystem function and provides other ecosystem services including water filtration, improved nutrient, and water cycling, increased habitat for wildlife, and more.

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Top 5 Questions Answered About Regenerative Agriculture - Allen Williams by the Noble Research Institute. “Allen Williams answers 5 of the most frequently asked questions he receives about regenerative agriculture.  With regenerative agriculture practices growing across the world, we wanted to provide some answers to what comes to most farmers' and ranchers' minds when thinking about making changes to a more regenerative approach.”

Use:

RangeWard helps farmers and ranchers save time and money while making regenerative grazing easier. They offer all-in-one machines that are easy to use and give producers a variety of fencing options. For example, the Razer Grazer is two tools in one. Producers can use the entire machine to fence an area, then remove the Power Arm to cross-fence. Their portable electric fencing tools help producers read their grass and animals and more easily manage their pastures’ grazing and rest periods. Check out their suite of tools here.

Act:

How can we as individuals support farming practices that protect and nourish people while restoring the planet? Find a regenerative farm near you. Buy food from them, get to know the farmers, and take advantage of volunteer days. Learn about where your food comes from and different production systems. Help get the word out about the benefits of regenerative agricultural practices. Spend as much time as you can outside. Build your own relationship with the land around you.

Ponder:

“Restoring land without restoring relationship is an empty exercise. It is relationship that will endure and relationship that will sustain the restored land.” - Robin Wall Kimmerer

Disclaimer: The Regeneration Weekly receives no compensation or kickbacks for brand features - we are simply showcasing great new regenerative products.

If you have any products you would like to see featured, please respond to this newsletter or send an email to meg(at)soil.works

The Regeneration is brought to you by Soilworks | Wholesome Meats | Cream Co. Meats | Grassroots Carbon | Grazing Lands | RangeWard

We are we eat, and it shows.

Our current food system is adept at producing cheap, hyper-palatable, nutrient-poor foods.

The US spends about 20% of its GDP - $4.1 trillion - on healthcare and is expected to grow at an average rate of 5.5 percent per year through 2027.

We have the highest per capita healthcare expenditure of any country in the world, yet rank near the bottom on many health metrics, including life expectancy, obesity, and prevalence of chronic disease.

Our medical students receive less than 25 hours of nutrition education during their four years in medical school and we have a growing population of overfed, undernourished citizens.

A paper published in Nature found that we are successfully producing ample carbohydrates but not nearly enough protein or other nutrients.

In an opinion letter in the Washington Post, coauthor Gerald C. Nelson, a professor emeritus at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and a former senior research fellow at the International Food Policy Research Institute, said the following:

Our success with carbohydrates, however, has had a serious downside: a worldwide plague of obesity, diabetes, and other diet-related diseases. The World Health Organization reports that in 2014, there were 462 million underweight adults worldwide but more than 600 million were obese—nearly two-thirds of them in developing countries. And childhood obesity is rising much faster in poorer countries than in richer ones. Meanwhile, micronutrient shortages such as Vitamin A deficiency are already causing blindness in somewhere between 250,000 and 500,000 children a year and killing half of them within 12 months of them losing their sight. Dietary shortages of iron, zinc, iodine, and folate all have devastating health effects. These statistics point to the need for more emphasis on nutrients other than carbohydrates in our diets.

Our cheap food has become very expensive. We’ve optimized for a few, specific outcomes while externalizing the health and environmental costs of such a production model. Our Standard American Diet is entrenched with highly industrialized, chemically-intensive, extractive farming methods, which have their own separate health risks apart from consuming the resulting products.

To shift our discussion on food security from “calories” to “nutrient security” means we must question how we produce (and promote) the most critical nutrients. We won’t solve our diabetes and obesity epidemics with more rice, corn, and wheat.

And much to the chagrin of Beyond Meat and Impossible Foods, we’re not going to solve our health or planetary crises with the same industrial, extractive processes that got us here.

But much to the chagrin of the regenerative food movement, we’re not going to regenerate our planet at the speed and scale we need until we start focusing on and regenerating human health.

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In our discussions about soil health, carbon sequestration, biodiversity, and ecosystem restoration, we’ve neglected to emphasize the human health benefits of a regenerative food system.

Over half of Americans reported following a diet in 2022 and reported healthfulness as a very important factor when deciding whether to purchase food and beverages and as “nutrient density” becomes a prominent term in food marketing, consumers are ripe to make more regenerative food choices.

Faced with a modern public health epidemic of chronic disease, we have to rethink our diet and get consumers actively involved in transitioning away from our broken, industrialized model.

How?

“Consumers won’t pay a premium price for regenerative food!” folks exclaim.

Herein lies the fundamental problem: the assumption that consumer purchasing decisions are entirely driven by price.

According to Harvard professor Gerald Zaltman, the subconscious mind drives consumer purchasing behavior.

Per Zaltman’s research, many consumers report comparing competing brands and price points when making purchase decisions, but what we report isn’t how we act.

Emotion drives our decisions.

Whether we’re discussing cross-fencing, CPG products, or nature-based solutions, ignoring our emotion- and health-driven humanity will never drive us to the regenerative future we seek.

We’re humans wanting to be seen, heard, respected, and cared for by other humans and connected within the natural world we’re all striving to repair, protect, and preserve.

We have to rethink our diet and get consumers actively involved in transitioning away from our broken, industrialized food system. How we think about our own physical, mental, and emotional health is an underestimated catalyst we need to scale regenerative food systems.

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Read:

“Stone Skipping Is a Lost Art. Kurt Steiner Wants the World to Find It” by Sean Williams. A long-form essay that’s sure to inspire. Kurt Steiner dedicated his adulthood to “stone skipping, sacrificing everything to produce world-record throws that defy the laws of physics. To hear him tell it, he has no choice.” If you’re short on time, at least read this excerpt:

Kurt toiled with the duality of his mental life throughout his teenage years, lurching from hyperfocus to apathy. Classmates would crowd around to watch him at a pinball machine, where he could go hours without losing a ball. He excelled at chess, could pick apart a radio and put it back together, and racked up an Asteroids score so crazy he assumes it broke any known record. “He was seeing the back end of the coding rather than the graphics on the screen,” Victor “Chip” Susol, one of Kurt’s oldest friends, told me.

…

Whenever he discovered a body of water on these sojourns, he skipped rocks. It felt natural, as if by clasping a stone he was anchored to the planet, able to “hold infinity in the palm of your hand,” in the words of William Blake. Skipping was “safe from development and capitalism, and in control,” he told me, at odds with a society that seemed “hell-bent on detaching itself from the natural world.”

Watch:

You may be surprised to learn that in the US, farmers have the highest suicide rate of any profession. Regeneration: The Beginning explores this crisis while exposing the human and environmental impacts of chemical farming. The first part of this docu-series follows the Breitkeutz family, a fourth-generation family running Stoney Creek Farm, as they transition from conventional practices - e.g. tilling the soil and spraying crops with herbicides - to more regenerative methods, which focus on improving the water cycle and increasing biodiversity. The series was produced by Farmer’s Footprint, a coalition of farmers, educators, doctors, scientists, and business leaders aiming to regenerate five million acres of farmland by 2025.

Disclaimer: The Regeneration Weekly receives no compensation or kickbacks for brand features - we are simply showcasing great new regenerative products.

If you have any products you would like to see featured, please respond to this newsletter or send an email to meg(at)soil.works

The Regeneration is brought to you by Soilworks | Wholesome Meats | Cream Co. Meats | Grassroots Carbon| Grazing Lands | RangeWard

“We need to be nicer to Mother Nature,” Ellen Degeneres said in a Twitter video, where behind her a stream rages with brown, silty water from California’s recent Biblical flooding. “Mother Nature is not happy with us.”

“Climate change is here,” a Santa Cruz woman told The Washington Post.

But it’s worth asking: was this flooding in California a result of climate change or our decoupling and mismanagement of our local ecosystems?

In a state most known for drought and wildfire, it’s easy to think this is “unprecedented” weather caused by climate change from activities done elsewhere.

Only it’s not.

Floods exceeding 25 feet of water in the Central Valley occur every 100-200 years.

The last deluge of this year’s ferocity was in early 1862 when California was a much different place than it is today.

“Late in 1861,” writes Tom Philpott in Perilous Bounty: The Looming Collapse of American Farming and How We Can Prevent It, “the state suddenly emerged from a two-decade dry spell when monster storms began lashing the west coast.”

“America has never before seen such desolation by flood as this has been, and seldom has the Old World seen the like,” reads an account from late January 1862. However, the people who once lived in these lands had seen similar storms before, and they had already fled to higher ground.

“We are informed that the Indians living in the vicinity of Marysville left their abodes a week or more ago for the foothills predicting an unprecedented overflow. They told the whites that the water would be higher than it has been for thirty years, and pointed high up on the trees and houses where it would come. The valley Indians have traditions that the water occasionally rises 15 or 20 feet higher than it has been at any time since the country was settled by whites, and as they live in the open air and watch closely all the weather indications, it is not improbable that they may have better means than the whites of anticipating a great storm.” - Nevada City Democrat, January 11, 1862

The Great Flood killed thousands of people; homes were destroyed and dead cattle littered the Central Valley.

This was a time when only 500,000 people lived in the entire state and when California wasn’t the world’s 5th largest supplier of food, cotton fiber, and other agricultural commodities.

California, now violently decoupled from traditional, ecological knowledge, has been absorbed by social and transcontextual factors which have made California ill-equipped to cope with the extreme weather that characterizes its climate.

We’ve dammed, diverted, and “controlled” every river system. Thousands of miles of canals traverse across the land. Wetlands are drained.

Now, when the water comes, it has nowhere to go. The organic matter in the soils is long gone and the rivers are blocked and diverted by concrete.

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California is a landscape known for extremes. Instead of learning from the people who knew how to live there, settlers opted to control the landscape…a habit we’ve continued into today.

Impressive, yet destructive, engineering feats like the Central Valley Project, disrupt the ecosystem’s ability to regulate extreme weather. The destroyed wetlands that used to cover the majority of the Central Valley sucked rain into vast aquifers and created floodplains that hosted immense biodiversity. Without the ancestral memory required to understand this landscape, we default into being hapless victims to a climate that will always be at war with our modern desire to control, reap, and sow at the expense of everything else. The consequences from devastations like these floods do not merely come from climate, but our disconnection with and destruction of the natural world in the name of domination.

Chalking this weather system up to only “climate change” absolves us from taking responsibility for the true problem: what we’ve done to the land and our relationship to it. Climate change is a symptom of our disease: our disconnection from nature and our abuse of our local ecosystems.

We can’t keep “combatting climate change” as a way to continue living exactly the same minus carbon. We must redefine “climate change” to mean the localized results of our mismanagement of natural systems in our attempts to control them and the many social, cultural, and political factors that have bifurcated humans from nature. 

Does “offsetting” the CO2 emissions from our transcontinental flights really matter when our world is drowning when we could have restored wetlands and created healthy floodplains? Will our vegan diets make us feel better about ourselves when our entire food systems are flushed away because we couldn’t figure out how to work with each other and with nature to create regenerative systems that build soil and protect the land from runoff and flooding?

The instant gratification of buying vegan leather or electric vehicles will not save us; they’ll only render us more useless against the increasing threats of natural disasters.

We must unlearn the ontology of separation of humanity and nature and relearn what it means to work and live within the bounds of our landscapes. 

Our abuse of our local ecosystems and the resilience they provide us is what makes these weather patterns catastrophic, but we can still change. Regenerative farms like Paicines Ranch and Mariah Vineyards weathered these floods well. Why? Because they’re working with nature, not against, fostering healthy, porous soils that can absorb the rain. 

“Many are also mimicking the varied vegetation of natural ecosystems with perennial shrubs, hedgerows, and trees that create windbreaks to shelter more vulnerable crops, slow rainfall in canopies to a more easily absorbed pace, protect the soil surface, hold soil in place with varied and deeper root structures, and create shelter for many creatures that contribute to healthy ecosystems.

“These farmers may suffer some losses from the severity of this weather. No one is immune. But their systems are far more capable of bouncing back,” reports Ryan Peterson.

These rains and other natural disasters will return, but the way we farm and interact with our ecosystems can put us on a path toward resilience.

Yes, Ellen, we need to be nicer to Mother Nature, but without understanding the whole, we’ll never adapt to weather the storms that will inevitably keep coming with increasing ferocity.

Mother Nature isn’t angry - she’s reminding us who’s actually in control. She’s not our enemy to conquer; she’s our wise elder inviting us to listen and understand how we are a part of her.

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Read:

The Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism by Naomi Klein. I recently reread this 2007 NYT Bestseller in light of the recent events in California. It’s as relevant today as it was when it was published. While contentious and conflating at times, Klein illuminates how chaotic events can be used and sometimes created to impose drastic economic, social, and political reorganization in vulnerable economies. 

Drink:

Mariah Vineyard’s Land to Market Wines. As mentioned above and detailed in a story for a different day, Mariah Vineyards in the Mendocino Ridge AVA weathered the Biblical flooding well. Their regenerative, dry farm techniques enliven the soils, creating a loam that’s not only teaming with life but also allowed the water to infiltrate without runoff or drowning the vines. As the Savory Institute’s first Land to Market Verified vineyard, Mariah is an example of how we can collectively move towards a “beyond sustainable,” resilient future and their wines are a reflection of the vineyards. Try Mariah Vineyard’s natural wines here.

Wear:

Sheep Inc. regenerative Merino wool knitwear. My love affair with Merino began on my thru-hikes of the Appalachian Trail. Nothing was as soft (or odor-resistant!) as Merino to wear day-in-day-out in unpredictable weather conditions. Sheep Inc. transformed my hobo-chic wool wardrobe into a timeless capsule of unisex, yet stylish, comfortable designs. Each piece is traceable back to the regeneratively raised, highest welfare-certified, happy sheep. They’re transparent about their emissions and continued quest to be the world’s first carbon-negative fashion brand. No, they’re not paying me. Yes, I get this excited about high-integrity brands. I’ve been living in “The Hoodie” during these temperamental, Texas temperatures. Give them a try for yourself here.

Disclaimer: The Regeneration Weekly receives no compensation or kickbacks for brand features - we are simply showcasing great new regenerative products.

If you have any products you would like to see featured, please respond to this newsletter or send an email to meg(at)soil.works

The Regeneration is brought to you by Soilworks | Wholesome Meats | Cream Co. Meats | Grassroots Carbon| Grazing Lands | RangeWard

Veganuary is an annual campaign that encourages people worldwide to go vegan for the month of January. Having been vegan for years through my late teens and early twenties resulting in severe health consequences that I’m still recovering from today…a decade into my #exvegan journey, I propose an alternative.

If you’re wary about going vegan for the month (or any length of time), I encourage you to try “Regenuary” instead. 

What the heck is Regenuary?

Regenuary was first coined in a 2020 Facebook post by The Ethical Butcher, a U.K.-based, regenerative butchershop, in response to the growing #veganuary buzz.

Simply swapping out beef and pork for nuts and avocado is utterly meaningless and definitely worse for the environment than simply choosing to eat well-raised animals.

As we import things such as avocado and soy-based fake meats to attempt to fill the gaps what impact are we actually having? Are we saving the planet?

No.

…

Imagine if Veganuary could be Regenuary where all foods eaten for the month of January are not imported, are local seasonal and the animals are farmed using regenerative agriculture, now that could save the world.

This last line sums up the essence of Regenuary: source as much of your food as possible from regenerative farming practices.

How do you participate in Regenuary?

At the movement’s core are the following guiding principles:

1. Source as much of your food as possible from local, regenerative producers. 

2. Where regenerative produce isn’t an option, look for produce marked as organic or biodynamic.

3. Avoid highly processed and imported foods.

4. Ask questions, do research, get involved in discussions and share your own ideas on food and the environment.

Regeneration International and Eat Wild have maps that can help point you toward your nearest regenerative farmer. Though many producers are active online and on social media, your best bet may just be your local farmers' market (find one near you here!). There, you can connect with a number of farmers and growers. And even if they’re not fully regenerative, they’re your local farmer, growing seasonal foods appropriate for your region, and that’s most important. Oftentimes, farmers can’t afford certifications but are incorporating nature-positive growing methods and would love to share their practices with you.

However you find a local producer, be sure to connect with them. Ask questions. Hear their stories. Be flexible with what you order, and ask your farmer what he or she has an abundance of or is having trouble moving. It’s a great way to discover new cuts of meat or vegetables that aren’t part of your usual lineup.

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“Fun fact: 70 percent of the world’s food comes from smallholder farmers and indigenous people, and a lot of them are farming regeneratively,” said Heather Terry, the CEO of GoodSam Foods. “Regenerative agriculture is arguably one of the easiest ways to combat climate change by seriously limiting or eliminating fertilizers altogether and by not using tilling methods which release large amounts of carbon into the atmosphere.

“When you buy regenerative, you contribute to the welfare of the farmers farming this way, and you’re helping to combat the climate crisis.”

Eating regeneratively can feel hard and expensive. But, with a little know-how combined with smart, low-waste cooking, you can transform your diet and health, all while regenerating the planet.

While the intent of most vegans and participants of Veganuary may be pure, going vegan will not fix agriculture’s impact on the planet.

Swapping out meat and other animal foods for plant-based burgers and other meat substitutes won’t fix the underlying problems in our food system. Switching meat for substitutes is akin to telling consumers to install different upholstery in their vehicles instead of exploring ways to reduce their fossil fuel dependence. 

To improve agriculture’s relationship with environmental and human health, we need to encourage farmers to adopt different practices throughout the entire system - not just in livestock production. Claims that certain soy burgers can save the planet without providing any information about how those soybeans were grown does nothing to support better agriculture. Did farmers use cover cropping? No-till drilling? Copious amounts of chemicals like pesticides and herbicides?

By opting out of the system entirely, and not eating meat at all, we don’t change how meat is produced.

We don’t need to quit eating meat. We need to engage with our food system and ask questions about how our food was grown no matter what we eat.

Are you a regenerative food producer looking to connect with consumers? Drop your information in the comments below!

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Full disclosure: I understand the incredible privilege it is to advocate for any specific diet. For anyone for who the above may seem inaccessible or out of reach, my advice is this: 

Eat the highest quality diet you can afford. 

“Quality” is subjectively defined as foods raised as well as possible in the context of your local ecosystem, prepared as thoughtfully as possible given your unique life circumstances, and eaten as culturally-appropriate as possible that honors your heritage. “Afford” is subjectively defined as accessible via cost, timing, location, and situation. 

We’re all in different bodies that are subject to different stressors within various environments, ecosystems, and familial situations. 

In short, try your best; your best is always good enough.

Disclaimer: The Regeneration Weekly receives no compensation or kickbacks for brand features - we are simply showcasing great new regenerative products.

If you have any products you would like to see featured, please respond to this newsletter or send an email to meg(at)soil.works

The Regeneration is brought to you by Soilworks | Wholesome Meats | Cream Co. Meats | Grassroots Carbon| Grazing Lands | RangeWard

There are many contributors to methane production and cattle are too often the villains in today’s story, but methane from any natural, biological process is reductionistic.

Why?

Methane produced biogenically is a part of the earth’s natural system. The methane emitted from cattle is part of the biogenic carbon cycle. They transform existing carbon, in the form of grass and other forage, into methane as part of their digestive process. It’s belched out and after about ten years is broken down into water and carbon dioxide molecules, which are cycled back to grow more grass.

The biogenic carbon cycle is the process by which plants absorb and sequester carbon. Plants remove carbon dioxide (CO2) from the atmosphere and deposit it into plant leaves, roots, and stems while releasing oxygen back into the atmosphere, in a process known as photosynthesis.

When plants perform photosynthesis, carbon is converted to cellulose, a carbohydrate that is foundational for growing plants. Cellulose is the most abundant organic compound in the world, present in all grasses, shrubs, crops, and trees, and particularly high in grasses and shrubs found on marginal lands, land unsuitable for growing crops. Two-thirds of all agricultural land is marginal, full of grasses dense in cellulose, a fiber that humans can’t digest. But guess who can digest cellulose?

Cattle.

Cows eat these grasses, and through enteric fermentation use the carbon and upcycle the cellulose for growth and other metabolic processes.

As depicted in the graphic above, cows belch methane which is then broken down into water and carbon dioxide molecules for plants to uptake once again via photosynthesis and fix to cellulose. And this natural cycling of carbon begins again.

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Fossil fuels on the other hand are not a part of the biogenic carbon cycle. We extract ancient carbon that has been locked underground for millennia, releasing new carbon dioxide into the atmosphere, which lasts thousands of years compared to methane’s ten years. For reference, the CO2 released from driving a car to work today will remain in the atmosphere, having a warming effect on our climate beyond our lifetimes, our children’s lifetimes, and even their children’s lifetimes. 

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Furthermore, many scientists have concluded that cattle are unfairly blamed for their methane emissions as a major contributor to greenhouse gas emissions. In the IAEA Annual Report in 2008, researchers state:

Since 1999 atmospheric methane concentrations have leveled off while the world population of ruminants has increased at an accelerated rate. Prior to 1999, world ruminant populations were increasing at the rate of 9.15 million head/year but since 1999 this rate has increased to 16.96 million head/year. Prior to 1999 there was a strong relationship between change in atmospheric methane concentrations and the world ruminant populations. However, since 1999 this strong relation has disappeared. This change in relationship between the atmosphere and ruminant numbers suggests that the role of ruminants in greenhouse gasses may be less significant than originally thought, with other sources and sinks playing a larger role in global methane accounting.

This doesn’t even acknowledge the fact that before the mid-1800s, there were about 30-60 million bison, over 10 million elk, 30-60 million white-tailed deer, 10-13 million mule deer, and 35-100 million pronghorn and caribou grazing North America’s grasslands. We’re now carrying a fraction of the animals and it’s estimated that in pre-settlement America, methane emissions were about 86% of current emissions from both farmed and wild ruminants.

In addition to cattle emissions being overblown, it’s also increasingly evident that methane emissions from leaky infrastructure in the oil and gas industry are underestimated by 48-76%. So not only are fossil fuels the leading emitter of carbon dioxide, as I discuss in this article, but this would also make them the leading emitter of methane.

It’s not the cow, it’s the car.

Bottom line: Blaming cows for methane is a red herring for the fossil fuel industry.

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Listen:

Matt Chatfield – I’m too lazy to farm against nature by Investing in Regenerative Agriculture and Food Podcast. A conversation with Matt Chatfield, the founder of Cornwall Project, to talk about the crucial impact of ruminants on land, how to build a successful business by farming with nature, and how to create a guaranteed market. Inspiring insight: When vegans visit the farm, they have a positive reaction. Ex-vegans form the fastest growing market in the UK. They’re realizing that you need animal fats of some sort in your diet and, at the same time, they’re looking for ethical systems. As a former vegan myself, this resonated with my return to health and ethical eating, too.

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Natural Resource Institute helps assess value of Texas’ ecosystem services by Sarah Fuller. “Can you put a price on clean air, water or white-tailed deer? The Texas A&M Natural Resources Institute, NRI, partnered with other agencies to study and assess the value of these “commodities of nature” and subsequent losses associated with land use changes.” Valuing the invaluable is an arduous task, but NRI has just released a report aiming to educate Texans and guide land conservation efforts. Read more here.

Disclaimer: The Regeneration Weekly receives no compensation or kickbacks for brand features - we are simply showcasing great new regenerative products.

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The Regeneration is brought to you by Soilworks | Wholesome Meats | Cream Co. Meats | Grassroots Carbon| Grazing Lands | RangeWard

“Meat-eaters are murderers.”

“Vegans/lab meat enthusiasts are dumb.”

“We need better meat or no meat.”

I’ve heard all of these; I’ve said variations of them, too, but our culture of combative vitriol and instant dismissal of alternative perspectives is a challenge to scaling a better food system.

What would happen if we approached opposition with inquiry and empathy instead?

“Meat-eaters are murderers.”

As an omnivore, my instinctual response might be full of four-letter words and I rally an outrage campaign. I’d validate my negativity bias and learn that my emotional range exists of only 1s and 0s. What outcome would this response likely create?

Perhaps it’s a bit like this Thanksgiving dinner from The Year of Outrage…

Everyone—family, girlfriends, soon-to-be-ex-husbands, co-workers, childhood friends—are seated around that table, eating that turkey. Except for your vegetarian cousin. What the hell is up with her? Can’t she just pretend for grandma’s sake? You know what would be hilarious? To show her a bunch of pictures of meat, with funny captions. Except whoops, it turns out she came prepared with videos of animals being brutally slaughtered. And the fight spreads out around the table during the salad course, but is quickly forgotten once the turkey comes out and your brother brings up Benghazi. Thanksgiving is ruined.

Reactions like these create a cycle. A cycle where we get outraged at each other, grow numb to the issues at hand and are rendered useless, or worse: destructive.

Our outrage affects our ability to focus on the problems and solutions that really matter.

When everyone is looking for something to get mad about, truly bad actors escape our attention; and when we indulge in the satisfaction of lighting our match in a blaze of outrage, someone, or something, else is left to contend with the ashes.

Nature and the vision of a regenerative food system are too often set ablaze by our addiction to viral negativity and self-righteousness.

What if we tried a different tactic towards conversations that don’t align with our existing worldviews?

Which has a better chance of a productive outcome? Conversational warfare and its power contests or a disarming debate with a lens of inquiry and empathy?

In a modern world when we are separated by screens and only able to communicate in tiny snippets of text, we gravitate towards the former, but true progress is within the latter.

Getting furious creates opponents.

Being curious creates collaborators.

Climate change and regenerative food systems have plenty of opponents.

To create the meaningful change we seek, we need more collaborators.

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Wise farmer gets the perfect revenge on a car salesman who cheated him on a truck. “A wise old farmer went to town to buy a new pickup truck that he saw advertised in the paper for a certain price. After telling the salesman which truck he wanted, they set down to do the paperwork. The salesman handed the farmer the bill, and the farmer declared, “This isn’t the price I saw!...” Click here to read how this farmer turned the table on his car salesman.

Read: 

The Year of Outrage is a chronicle of mostly forgotten outrages that affords a chance to look back and reflect on a few specific instances when good was achieved—and lots more where nothing was gained at some cost. “From righteous fury to faux indignation, everything we got mad about in 2014—and how outrage has taken over our lives.” Read it here.

Listen:

Nicole Dooling & Michael Frey - Dirt & Mariah Vineyards, The World’s First Savory Institute Global Land To Market Verified Regenerative Vineyard by the Organic Wine Podcast. How do you transition a multi-generational winery to be the first Savory Institute Global Land To Market Verified regenerative vineyard in the world? Communication, collaboration, and an unwavering commitment to working with nature and each other. Tune into this episode to learn how Nicole and Michael worked with their family to transition Mariah Vineyards to a regenerative ecosystem teeming with life and how winemakers and consumers alike can adopt a more nature-first perspective.

Disclaimer: The Regeneration Weekly receives no compensation or kickbacks for brand features - we are simply showcasing great new regenerative products.

If you have any products you would like to see featured, please respond to this newsletter or send an email to meg(at)soil.works

The Regeneration is brought to you by Soilworks | Wholesome Meats | Cream Co. Meats | Grassroots Carbon| Grazing Lands | RangeWard

Last week, Climate TRACE, a non-profit coalition of researchers, data analysts, and NGOs who use satellite coverage, artificial intelligence, and remote sensing to independently track human-caused emissions, published a new report showing that half of the 50 largest sources of global greenhouse gas emissions are oil and gas production facilities.

From the report:

In no sector is the power of Climate TRACE’s emissions monitoring approach more apparent than in oil and gas. Last year’s Climate TRACE inventory found that emissions from oil and gas production, transport, and refining had been significantly underestimated — owing, in part, to limited reporting requirements and consistent underestimates of methane emissions from both intentional flaring as well as leaks.

Among the top countries that report their oil and gas production emissions to the UN, Climate TRACE finds emissions are as much as three times higher than self-reported data.

Many have underreported their emissions, and historically, we’ve had few means of holding sector participants accountable, resulting in emissions as much as THREE TIMES HIGHER than originally published.

Recall this outdated graph from 2016, showing the energy sector as responsible for almost ¾ of all global emissions:

We’ve discussed this graph and the misconception it portrays about the agriculture sector in this article.

Still, Climate TRACE solidifies its obsolescence, reducing agricultural emissions and giving the energy sector an even larger share.

Why? Because unsurprisingly, the data has been flawed from the beginning since it relied on SELF-REPORTED oil and gas data!

And now that we have the technology to fact-check, we’re disempowering a long-standing public relations and lobbying strategy designed to disguise and ignore actual emissions.

This matters because 1) we care about the planet and 2) we can only manage what we can measure.

We can’t solve a problem that we’re not accurately diagnosing or understanding.

Every minute mainstream media scapegoats cattle is another minute the oil and gas industry can hide behind its literal and figurative smokescreen.

A distracted public can’t read about leaking pipelines, unlit field flares, and the underreporting of emissions by as much as three times.

And although this report further shrinks livestock emissions, it doesn’t mean the livestock sector is off the hook to improve.

In fact, we at Soilworks are literally putting our money where our mouths are to work towards a carbon-neutral (or negative!), regeneratively-raised livestock industry.

However, if we as a global collective really want to “save the planet” and cut emissions, we shouldn’t be wasting time demonizing beef, a nutrient-dense food that supports healthy ecosystems, and focus instead on reducing our dependence on fossil fuels.

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An Open Letter to Bill Gates on Food, Farming, and Africa from Common Dreams. As Bill Gates offers yet more solutions to the world’s problems, 50 organizations focused on food sovereignty wrote an open letter imploring him to step back and learn from those on the ground. They highlight 4 distortions of some of his claims: “1) the supposed need for "credit for fertilizer, cheap fertilizer" to ensure agricultural productivity, 2) the idea that the Green Revolution of the mid-20th century needs to be replicated now to address hunger, 3) the idea that "better" seeds, often produced by large corporations, are required to cope with climate change, and 4) your suggestion that if people have solutions that "aren't singing Kumbaya," you'll put money behind them.” Will Farmer Bill listen?

Watch:

Changing Paradigms | Regenerative Agriculture: a Solution to our Global Crisis? by Henry Smith. “Changing Paradigms” explores the power of regenerative agriculture in improving the natural environment, human health, and reliable profit in sheep farming. This documentary follows Charles Massy (author of “Call of the Reed Warbler”) and Norm Smith, who take a sustainable, systems-thinking approach to sheep farming. Having moved away from industrial practices of land clearing and using chemical fertilizers and pesticides, they now work with nature rather than against it, and in turn, have revived the once over-grazed land. 

News:

Red meat is not a health risk. New study slams years of shoddy research referring to the Institute for Health Metric and Evaluation’s (IMHE) new study in Nature: Health effects associated with consumption of unprocessed red meat: a Burden of Proof study. What makes this study most interesting is IHME was also behind the Global Burden of Disease study published in The Lancet, which flexes its deep marketing pockets with its plant-based “Planetary Health Diet.” After many calls of implausibility, criticism, and questions of IHME’s findings, they release this bombshell: a complete reversal of their original meat-damning claims. Given the impact on global policy, The Lancet should retract the Global Burden of Disease study. Will it?

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Disclaimer: The Regeneration Weekly receives no compensation or kickbacks for brand features - we are simply showcasing great new regenerative products.

If you have any products you would like to see featured, please respond to this newsletter or send an email to meg(at)soil.works

The Regeneration is brought to you by Soilworks | Wholesome Meats | Cream Co. Meats | Grassroots Carbon| Grazing Lands | RangeWard

“There are just two actions needed to prevent catastrophic climate breakdown: leave fossil fuels in the ground and stop farming animals,” writes Monbiot. And as you can guess, here is where he and I deviate as keyboard warriors in the discussion of COP27, the 2022 United Nations Climate Change Conference, sponsored by Coca-Cola, the world’s top fossil fuel-based, plastic polluter.

He calls for the elimination of livestock and a farm-free future.

I call for the elimination of overly simplistic, techno-utopian visions that would undermine millions of people’s livelihoods, destroy local economies, and cause more harm than good, especially in places where livestock are an integral part of sustainable, agro-ecosystems.

Villainizing all livestock and advocating for radical shifts of diet and land use everywhere – and even being so bold to posit a future where protein is derived from large fermentation vats – is senseless.

Here are just four ways livestock matter and deserve a more nuanced discussion about the role they have in transforming our food, land and justice systems.

1. Livestock ranchers, farmers, and pastoralists provide key ecosystem services.

Well-managed grazing can lead to improved environmental outcomes and beneficial ecosystem services like improving soil health (manure fertilization) and nutrient cycling (returning nutrients to the soil via manure, reducing waste and runoff), preserving and restoring wildlife and pollinator habitat, and stimulating vegetation growth (through their movements across land surfaces).  

2. About ⅓ of the world’s food supply is produced by small, family-run farms.

Eliminating livestock only intensifies poverty, malnutrition, and inequality. Livestock is the most valuable household asset for roughly 1.3 billion people around the world and is a “living ATM” during times of need. Animal-sourced foods provide critical nutrition to people around the world, especially during pregnancy and the first 1,000 days of life. When we neglect livestock, we neglect the millions of women who depend on livestock for an income and a pathway to economic independence.

3. Livestock emissions are misleading, overblown, and contribute to misinformed, dangerous decisions.

Well-respected data and graphics providers, like Our World in Data, provide easily-consumed data for journalists to easily scapegoat livestock as the big villain of climate change. However, comparing various food groups might be well-meaning, but unfortunately, it is flawed. Some foods mainly emit long-lived climate pollutants, such as CO2 and nitrous oxide, while others (e.g. beef and lamb) emit the short-lived pollutant methane. The truth is mainstream assessments of livestock and climate change are flawed and they make sweeping generalizations about the industry with dire consequences that will accentuate global food and climate injustices.

4. A focus on net-zero targets for carbon removal from land – through reducing livestock use and planting trees, for example – misunderstands natural ecosystem function and will misfire.

Trees are fire-prone carbon sources in many environments and can be less effective at capturing and retaining carbon than grasslands with well-grazed livestock. The rush to plant trees in the name of “carbon removal” where trees shouldn’t be planted or to decommission biodiverse ecosystems, like grasslands, because they’re most suitable for grazing livestock is driven by misunderstandings of ecosystems and carbon dynamics. While there are many agroforestry and carbon removal projects genuinely working towards restoration and regeneration, blanket statements like “plant more trees” or “eliminate all livestock” lack forethought.

Calls to eliminate grazing animals underutilizes grasslands and leads to further destruction of biodiversity, increased climate risk, and unethical displacement of Indigenous communities and pastoralists. Ironically, to restore and maintain optimal health, biodiversity, and carbon sequestration, these grasslands are best managed with more animals and animal impact, not less.

We should not ignore livestock-related challenges. But we should also not ignore the many sustainable approaches to raising livestock that are essential to helping more than a billion people survive the climate emergency. Many people around the world do not have the privilege to eliminate nutrient-dense, animal-sourced foods, and anti-meat proclamations are dangerous, elitist, and ignore the many benefits of grazing animals within a sustainable food system. 

Livestock keeping – in the right places, with the right management – can and should be part of the climate solution. These are the solutions our leaders and governments should be discussing.

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Listen:

Lew Moorman: Innovating Regenerative Ag at Soilworks and Venture Capital at Scaleworks on Consensus in Conversation. What do the transition from radio to television, from on-premise to cloud-based software, and from conventional to regenerative farming have in common? An uproar of “no ways” and “impossibles” prior to acceptance. If you’re curious about innovation in the agriculture sector or how maximizing profits incentivizes sustainability, you’ll want to hear what Lew has to say on this episode. Listen here.

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The fox owns herself by Antonia Malchick. Antonia gave me a brilliant idea (absentee vote and plan to be entirely off-grid over election days) and a thought-provoking story regarding a fox. Here’s an excerpt: “The question of property, and how long ago it was that some humans decided to claim ownership over others—water, wildlife, women—and then create justifications for such claims through centuries of philosophical, religious, and legal argument. What could change if we inverted that relationship? If we started from an assumption that all beings own themselves, that every being has agency and choice?” Read the full essay here.

News:

FACT SHEET: Biden-⁠Harris Administration Announces Roadmap for Nature-Based Solutions to Fight Climate Change, Strengthen Communities, and Support Local Economies. I’d be remise to discuss COP27 without mentioning the Biden-Harris Administration’s Nature-Based Solutions Roadmap, an outline of strategic recommendations to scale nature-based solutions. Most notable concession when discussing the challenges to accelerating nature-based solutions: “Federal policies and processes can unintentionally promote conventional solutions over nature-based solutions.”

Disclaimer: The Regeneration Weekly receives no compensation or kickbacks for brand features - we are simply showcasing great new regenerative products.

If you have any products you would like to see featured, please respond to this newsletter or send an email to meg(at)soil.works

The Regeneration is brought to you by Soilworks | Wholesome Meats | Cream Co. Meats | Grassroots Carbon| Grazing Lands | RangeWard

The gift of traveling is also a bittersweet reconnaissance: an exploration to discover the unseen and what is taken for granted.

From flying over the San Joaquin Valley and seeing nothing but agricultural fields for miles and miles…

or over Europoort Rotterdam, one of the largest industrial zones in the world…

or over one of Norway’s infamous salmon farms, you get a glimpse of the deepest gears of the industrial machine.

When you begin to see things as they really are in an attempt to understand the meaning behind what we generally conceive of as mundane, it becomes painful to witness industrialization, destroyed landscapes, and cities built from the blood of colonialism. 

The march of progress with all of its shiny promises quickly loses its allure and we start to ask questions like is the solution to overfishing really farmed salmon?

Questions like: what happens to the 5 billion farmed fish per year that can’t participate in their bio-appropriate ecosystem?

What happens to the fish that remain wild?

Turns out, the concentration of salmon is a perfect breeding ground for sea lice. As a result, scientists breed the salmon to be resistant to the pest through genetics and vaccinations, but the sea lice have proliferated and have developed a preference for this food source. Now what? Where do they go? To wild salmon.

Salmon farming now rivals overfishing in the destruction of wild fish stocks, meaning that the wild fish stop contributing to their ecosystem because the industrialization of their existence prevents them from nourishing the fjords in the cycle of life. 

Salmon are a keystone species. They keep the forest alive. Thwart the lifecycle of the salmon, you thwart the functionality of the entire web of life around it. Artifishal from Patagonia describes it beautifully. Watch the full film to understand the depth of this problem.

Ignore that their feed is shipped over 6,000 miles from soy farms in Brazil using cargo ships (some of which produce more GHGs than 50 million cars, just one pollution and destruction metric of the system). The entire fleet’s emissions would be more than 275 billion cars. With only around 1.5 billion cars in the world, it’s a bit unfathomable, no? But yeah, the individual is the problem. Go buy a Tesla, we’re told.

Add in bilge dumping, which is the process of cargo ships illegally dumping toxic engine waste in the oceans, suffocating marine life on an incomprehensible scale. Visit this active map to see how many of these vessels are in the oceans right now. This video breaks down the problem of bilge dumping, a largely unreported activity:

This isn’t a problem isolated to salmon. It’s proliferated throughout everything in our modern culture.

But when you become disenchanted with the prevailing narrative of progress, you begin to wonder what it was like to be engulfed with it. How did it feel in Westland, Netherlands to watch native pastures disappear and turn into endless whitewalls of greenhouses?

Rather than accepting what is, you start to wonder what was, and what could be.

Like a beaver damming a river, humans consuming what the landscape offers is not inherently a problem. The precarious idea that the living world is ours to control, rather than to be in relationship with, the insatiable growth of the industrial economy, the interconnectedness of our food systems and resource bases have created an illusion of carrying capacity.

We’ve become cogs in the industrialized factory farm.

Most places have more than enough space to fend for themselves, feed themselves, clothe, and house themselves, but GDP and a phantom of growth keep everyone producing and consuming ad infinitum.

It’s easier to buy processed foods from thousands of miles away than it is to buy foods native to an area or culture. Why?

We’ve bought into a globalized food system and the perception that it’s every country’s responsibility to “feed the world” as a way to masquerade good intentions while growing markets. Good intentions justify the destruction of the fjords. Good intentions justify endless greenhouses in what used to be biodiverse prairies. Good intentions turn England’s and America’s grasslands into wheat and corn fields. 

“Good intentions” rooted in industrialization justify turning the world into a factory farm.

Yet we rarely ask if it’s working. Do Norwegian salmon or regeneratively-raised Texan livestock need to feed the world or can people eat the most nutrient-dense, culturally appropriate foods their landscapes can sustainably provide them? Does the world need to eat greenhouse-grown tomatoes from Holland or can folks grow them when they can on their porch? Does Mexico need to feed the world, or can Mexico feed itself?

If we don’t question the assumption that we need to “feed the world” we also won’t ask other questions. Why is it “unsustainable” and “releasing too much carbon” for some countries to burn trees for cooking and warming their homes, but when other countries import their trees to burn in biomass facilities, it’s “renewable energy”?

We can’t let the smokescreen of the energy crisis and climate change be used to exploit land, water, biodiversity, agriculture…and life.

We can’t let the notion of “feeding the world” hinder us from regenerating the local ecosystems, communities, and health of our regional locale.

Our best foot forward is to acknowledge that each path is different for everyone and take responsibility for our existence and our role in ecology. This will require a level of innovation to reconnect us with our landscapes, like those we are working to support at Grassroots Carbon.

Reconnection and regeneration will look different for everyone, a unique nuance that’s rarely tolerated in industrialization, but if we’re to stop factory farming - of our food, our planet, and ourselves - we have to break free.

Disclaimer: The Regeneration Weekly receives no compensation or kickbacks for brand features - we are simply showcasing great new regenerative products.

If you have any products you would like to see featured, please respond to this newsletter or send an email to meg(at)soil.works

The Regeneration is brought to you by Grassroots Carbon, a regenerative carbon credit provider incentivizing grassland regeneration at scale. Are you a rancher interested in being paid to sequester carbon? Learn more here. Are you interested in buying carbon credits that support regeneration and impacts beyond carbon? Learn more here.

Last year, Bill Gates proclaimed that “all rich countries should move to 100% synthetic beef” and advocated for the use of “regulation to totally shift the demand" in order to combat climate change.

Ultra-processed food companies tout artfully obfuscated health and environmental benefits of their fake meat alternatives to convince consumers that “meat doesn’t have to come from animals.”

However, upending meat and the livestock industry will not resolve our climate, health, or justice crises.

Learn how food is truly produced, and learn that meat-free does not mean death- or destruction-free.

Plant-based meats aren’t as green as they appear and cherry-pick metrics to make a marketing cause.

“They focus on the CO2,” says Frédéric Leroy, a professor at Vrije Universiteit Brussel in Brussels, “but that’s a very limited view.” Sustainability metrics like soil health and biodiversity should be part of the calculation, he says, and no one addresses the biogenic effects of well-raised livestock.

Most fake-meat manufacturers use proteins from soy or peas, grown in large fields where only one plant is allowed to grow, leaving any other plant, animal, or insect ousted from the ecosystem.

“Monocultures will have impacts on soil erosion, they depend heavily on fossil fuels because of the fertilizers, and they’re a nightmare for biodiversity,” says Leroy.

Furthermore, contrary to what meat substitute shoppers want to believe, not all livestock grazing systems are created equal. Rather than halting the appetite for real meat by demonizing its consumption, a better way to catalyze systemic change would be to focus on where animals add the most value.

In fact, a 2019 report by the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) determined that:

• 86% of the forages, crop residues, and other by-products that comprise livestock feed are not suitable for human consumption.

• Animal products account for 18% of global calories and 34% of global protein consumption. And in Latin American countries, low-carbon grazing systems contribute to food security, as they produce more valuable nutrients for humans (such as proteins) than they consume.

• Of the 2.5 billion hectares needed for livestock production, 77 percent are grasslands- areas where the vegetation is dominated by grasses. And a large share of existing pastures could only be used for grazing animals because they are too degraded for cropland.

Ironically, Microsoft, the company Gates himself co-founded, recently purchased more than 40,000 tonnes of sequestered soil carbon from a regenerative livestock operation.

The health halo of plants does NOT make these substitutes healthy either.

For example, here’s a snapshot of the fake meat darling, Impossible Foods:

• Their formula contains 19 patents and 21 complex components - including genetically modified soybeans, processed oils, and methylcellulose to act as a binder.

• The company’s secret weapon is soy leghemoglobin (heme for short) - a genetically modified organism that enables its patties to “bleed” like beef. In 2017, the Food and Drug Administration deemed heme unsafe for human consumption after uncovering that a quarter of Impossible’s “magic” molecule was composed of 46 unexpected proteins. The verdict was not reversed until July 2018, more than a year after the product was commercially available.

• A separate study identified 11 parts per billion (ppb) of glyphosate in the Impossible patty. Exposure to even 0.1 (ppb) of glyphosate can damage and disrupt the human microbiome.

In yet another stroke of irony, a 2018 life-cycle analysis conducted by Quantis concluded that a rancher would have to produce one “regeneratively” raised burger to offset the 3.5 kilograms of CO2 emissions emitted into the atmosphere by one Impossible Burger.

Perhaps the truth is this: fake meat is more about intellectual property and profits than about health, ethics, or the environment.

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When those intolerant of nuance assert “meat is bad” and end it there, we miss the chance to inform consumers about how to source protein that can nourish them and breathe new life into degraded land.

Proponents of an animal-free food system fail to recognize that ruminants, when deployed in a planned grazing system, can help to sequester carbon back into topsoil.

Instead of propagating risky food technologies that are problems disguised as desirable solutions, consumers should consider a more responsible method of livestock production - one based on eliminating chemical inputs and increasing ecosystem biodiversity.

Meat isn’t the villain; engineering ourselves away from nature is.

We must acknowledge that over 820 million people suffer from hunger or malnutrition. And more than 383 million people living below the international poverty line are pastoralists or smallholders relying on livestock for food security and income. Therefore, we should invest in the regenerative grazing sector to increase food security, restore marginal land, and expand the demand for regenerative graziers who serve as ecological service providers.

To find purveyors in your area, check out this interactive map of ranchers that meet the American Grassfed Association’s strict certification criteria for meat and dairy products. 

Additional reading:

‘Farm-Free’ Lab Food Is Catastrophic for Human Health and the Environment, Report Says

Bill Gates, Climate Warrior. And Super Emitter

6 Reasons Impossible Burger’s CEO Is Wrong About GMO Soy

FDA on “Bleeding” veggie burger: “no basis for safety”

Podcast I’m listening to:

Nicolette Hahn Niman – Eating less and better meat is not the solution

“Strongly based on various research, Nicolette wishes to rethink the idea that the key to regeneration is less and better meat. For Nicolette, it is absolutely unnecessary to lessen our meat consumption as studies show that there hasn’t been a significant increase in meat consumption in the U.S. from a hundred years ago. Instead, what she pointed out is that if we could reassess industrialized meat production, where animals can be treated fairly and not be considered as ‘mine’, then we can shift to a high-quality meat production that is safe, healthy, and regenerative.”

Disclaimer: The Regeneration Weekly receives no compensation or kickbacks for brand features - we are simply showcasing great new regenerative products.

If you have any products you would like to see featured, please respond to this newsletter or send an email to meg(at)soil.works

The Regeneration is brought to you by Wholesome Meats | Soilworks | Grassroots Carbon| Grazing Lands | RangeWard

In 2019, the New York City mayor announced that all NYC public schools would have “Meatless Mondays.” Earlier this year, current Mayor Eric Adams expanded the program to Fridays.

“Meatless Mondays are good for our students, communities, and the environment,” said Schools Chancellor Richard A. Carranza. “Our 1.1 million students are taking the next step towards healthier, more sustainable lives. Our students and educators are truly leaders in this movement, and I salute them!”

But there’s one glaring problem: reducing school children’s meat consumption will hardly impact emissions, nor will it make kids healthier.

If all animals were removed from the United States food system, total U.S. GHG emissions would be reduced by only 2.6%. 

New York City Public schools enroll 1,058,888 students or approximately 0.32% of the total population in the United States. 49.5 million students were enrolled in public schools nationwide or approximately 15% of the population.

How much of a dent will meatless Mondays and Fridays in NYC public schools make in emissions? In all U.S. public schools? Negligible, but the consequences could be dire.

"In one voice we talk about fighting childhood obesity, diabetes, yet you go into a school building every day and you see the food that feeds our health care crisis," Mayor Eric Adams said, apparently in regards to the meat this new initiative removed from the public school menu.

And that menu?

A quick look at the October K-8 menu reveals that Mondays and Fridays are still packed with grilled cheese sandwiches, fried mozzarella sticks, and the “healthy,” “vegetarian” bean burritos that took Twitter by storm earlier this year.

Will fried and ultra-processed foods help fight against childhood obesity and diabetes more than roasted meat and vegetables?

Eliminating meat does more harm than good.

A 2005 study conducted by a University of California Davis nutrition scholar, Lindsay Allen, found that among school-age children, those who consumed meat daily dramatically surpassed their vegetarian peers in muscle growth, intelligence, and problem-solving skills.

"The group that received the meat supplements were more active in the playground, more talkative and playful, and showed more leadership skills," Allen said.

Parents who find the idea of eating animals reprehensible might have some tough choices to make, she added. "There's absolutely no question that it's unethical for parents to bring up their children as strict vegans," she said. “The only way to guarantee that children absorb all the nutrients they need is to feed them meat and fish.”

These findings are not only alarming for school children in general but especially for the 71.9% of those in the NYC public school system who are economically disadvantaged and rely on school lunches for oftentimes the only meal they receive each day.

Removing meat from 40% of children’s school meals is certain to adversely affect their development.

Instead of treating our kids like experiments at the expense of their development, could we use the opportunity to teach them how food reaches their plates? Could we reconnect them with the farmers who nourish them?

Could we show them how they, too, can be stewards of their land and animals and choose a diet that’s healthy, ethical, and sustainable within their local ecosystems without eliminating one of the most nutrient-dense foods on their school menus?

What environmental and health impacts could that have long-term?

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Additional Reading:

Forced Choice Restriction in Promoting Sustainable Food Consumption: Intended and Unintended Effects of the Mandatory Vegetarian Day in Helsinki Schools

Risks and benefits of vegan and vegetarian diets in children

Nutritional and greenhouse gas impacts of removing animals from US agriculture

Adipose Tissue: Physiology to Metabolic Dysfunction

Podcast I’m listening to:

Dietary protein: amount needed, ideal timing, quality, and more with Don Layman, Ph.D. on The Drive by Peter Attia

“Don Layman is a Professor of Food Science and Human Nutrition at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign. He has spent the past 40 years investigating the role of dietary protein in muscle protein synthesis. In this episode, Don describes how his decades of research have shaped his thinking around protein, muscle, anabolic factors, metabolism, and more. He explains the recommended dietary allowance (RDA) for protein: what it is, how it came about, and how it should serve only as a guide for the minimum protein necessary for survival rather than as an optimal level of protein intake.”

Kid-Friendly Product I enjoy:

100% Grassfed Beef BoboLinks by Blue Nest Beef

Okay - these are adult-friendly, too, and they’re not only nutrient-dense and delicious but they’re made from beef that comes ONLY from Audubon-certified, bird-friendly American ranches and preserved by traditional, natural fermentation. In other words, kids love them, adult kids love them, and they’re healthy, sustainable, easy on the gut, and delicious on the taste buds. Try some for yourself here and use code BOBO10 to save $10 off your first package.

Disclaimer: The Regeneration Weekly receives no compensation or kickbacks for brand features - we are simply showcasing great new regenerative products.

If you have any products you would like to see featured, please respond to this newsletter or send an email to meg(at)soil.works

The Regeneration is brought to you by Wholesome Meats | Soilworks | Grassroots Carbon| Grazing Lands | RangeWard

From “giving Earth” a $3 billion dollar company to adopting regeneratively sourced textiles, fashion brands can be impactful stewards of the earth and our food system.

What’s good for the planet, is good for business, says Patagonia founder Yvon Chouinard who just transferred the ownership of the company to a trust and non-profit focused on solving climate change.

Does every business need to follow suit? Not necessarily.

But with increasing demand from consumers for environmentally and socially responsible apparel alongside supply chain and consistency issues from the effects of climate change, more brands are changing the way they’ve historically done business.

The operative word here is business. Even Patagonia’s laudable action only works if the company continues to make a profit…which is driven by consumption.

If what might actually be best for the planet is a degrowth plan to reduce consumerism and dependence on fossil fuel-laden materials, that might not be best for business; but without business, there would be no profits to invest in conscious inputs, manufacturing, supply chains, employment conditions, and ultimately a better planet.

So how do other founders and businesses act boldly in a way that inspires mindfulness, strengthens and supports the role of activism, shifts the typical model of building a consumer-focused brand, AND generates profits to reinvest and create a sustainable business flywheel?

In utopia, those with a bias towards action for a better industry could:

1. Strive for the best until they know better, then they do that.

2. Invest in regenerative inputs and strive to find ways to reduce fossil fuel-based materials.

3. Reinvest in workers down the supply chain.

4. Balance true costs, accessibility, and profitability.

5. Build for legacy, acknowledging the privilege to be able to do so, and more.

Three examples in the fashion industry who embody one or more of these are:

Eileen Fisher and The Savory Institute

Eileen Fisher’s history is an inspiration for any company founder - a focus on a timeless, circular design that aims to operate as sustainably and ethically as possible within a business framework. They’ve been advocates for labor rights, circular supply chains, social justice, and regenerative agriculture. In 2019, they partnered with The Savory Institute under their Land to Market program to prioritize regenerative land practices and source the highest quality wool. “For an industry where human rights and sustainability are not the effect of a particular initiative, but the cause of a business well run. Where social and environmental injustices are not unfortunate outcomes, but reasons to do things differently,” stated Eileen Fisher in a press release announcing the new partnership. 

Timberland and Other Half Processing

Timberland also has a long history as advocates for environmental and social justice and are partners with Savory’s Land to Market program. With their partner, Other Half Processing, Timberland is an example that fully transparent, regenerative leather sourcing is possible. Co-founder, Mark Kleinschmit said, “A lot of animal byproducts — or virtually all of the animal byproducts from high-attribute animals like grass-fed beef, organic or regenerative — were either just not being collected at all, or were definitely not being kept separate from the commodity stream of byproducts.” Their partnership with Timberland ensured that not only were these better hides diverted from waste and differentiated from commodity hides, but it also helps further inject value into regenerative livestock practices and supports smaller tanneries, manufacturers and local communities.

Fibershed

Fibershed is a non-profit organization that develops fiber and textile systems that focus on carbon farming, regional production and processing, public education, and community development. They partner with small producers to decentralize the textile industry, reviving local supply chains in the process.

None of these donated their entities to the planet; however, they’re making meaningful impact as they work to produce textiles and garments that are in harmony with nature.

Environmentally-conscious consumers face a plethora of options: wool, nylon, silk, hemp, cotton, flax, and leather to name a few. 

Although natural fabrics have the ability to decompose, textile sourcing methods can still have dark underbellies like child labor or poor working conditions for laborers.

And natural doesn’t necessarily mean that it was produced regeneratively or ethically. Wool and leather can come from animals that are being overgrazed, thereby damaging ecosystems and emitting excess carbon. Cotton, in particular, is one of the world's dirtiest crops, with an estimated 48 million pounds of pesticides used on cotton grown in the United States alone in 2017 and globally emits 220 million metric tons of carbon dioxide annually. 

For consumers concerned about differentiating between greenwashing and brand activism, Good On You provides ratings on thousands of clothing brands based on their treatment of humans, animals, and the environment. The highest quality goods aren’t often the most accessible goods, but consumers can still be mindful and not let an inability to make perfect purchases be the enemy of good ones.

Consumers can sill be mindful and not let an inability to make perfect purchases be the enemy of good ones.

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In closing, consumers are becoming increasingly more aware of humanity's impact on the planet and strive to make that impact a positive one. 

Any company, organization, founder, or individual that can, incrementally or monumentally, accelerate regeneration and help us rethink and find new approaches to capitalism that are equitable and focused on value creation over value extraction is good for the planet.

Pragmatic action based on thoughtful, reasoned decision-making is the cornerstone to effective change.

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Additional resources:

Should what we wear matter as much as what we eat?

Podcast: Arizona Muse from walking fashion shows for Prada to global activist for biodynamic farming from Investing in Regenerative Agriculture

Podcast: Leading with purpose with Vincent Stanley, Patagonia’s Director of Philosophy and Chief Storyteller from Positive Leadership

Lagom Leather - fully traceable leather goods from White Oak Pastures in Bluffton, Georgia

Woolfolk - yarns from Ovis 21 wool that has been verified by Land to Market and helping to restore the Patagonian grasslands

Fibershed: Growing a Movement of Farmers, Fashion Activists, and Makers for a New Textile Economy by Rebecca Burgess

From the New York Times: Billionaire No More: Patagonia Founder Gives Away the Company

Alternative/controversial perspective on Patagonia’s recent going “on purpose” ownership transfer: Patagonia is Accelerating the End of Democracy

Disclaimer: The Regeneration Weekly receives no compensation or kickbacks for brand features - we are simply showcasing great new regenerative products.

If you have any products you would like to see featured, please respond to this newsletter or send an email to meg(at)soil.works

The Regeneration is brought to you by Wholesome Meats | Soilworks | Grassroots Carbon| Grazing Lands

Per the U.S. Bureau Labor and Statistics, we spend a little over an hour each day eating, but unless you live in one of those “special” places or have a work environment free of colleagues and Zoom meetings, you wear clothes for at least half of each day.

Headlines bombard us with the environmental impact of our plates, yet we rarely hear about the impact of our wardrobes.

I, too, am often blissfully unaware of the impacts of my clothes. Do they both serve their function and look slightly presentable? Yes? Wear it. That’s the general extent of thought that I put into my daily clothing.

I’m ashamed to admit that I’m not as mindful as I should be of my wardrobe; I’m more ashamed that a chick flick was the tipping point for me to wise up.

Here, in The Devil Wears Prada, Meryl Streep monologues about the long value chain of what appeared to be only a frumpy, cerulean blue sweater:

She sums up the journey of cerulean as a symbol:

“That blue represents millions of dollars of countless jobs, and it’s sort of comical how you think that you’ve made a choice that exempts you from the fashion industry, when in fact, you’re wearing a sweater that was selected for you by the people in this room… from a pile of “stuff.”’

Millions of dollars, countless jobs, and more went into one clearance rack sweater.

But what else is behind the scenes? Across the entire industry?

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As New York Fashion Week launches, let’s dive into the not-so-fashionable aspects of the fashion industry: their emissions, pollution, and waste.

The fashion industry is a super user of fossil fuels, relying heavily on petrochemicals for many modern (but they’re vegan!) textiles.

Per the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) and the Ellen MacArthur Foundation:

• The fashion industry uses 93 billion cubic meters of water each year — enough to meet the consumption needs of five million people.

• Around 20% of wastewater worldwide comes from fabric dyeing and treatment.

• Of the total fiber input used for clothing, only a small fraction is recycled and 87% is incinerated or disposed of in a landfill.

• The fashion industry is responsible for 10% of annual global carbon emissions, more than all international flights and maritime shipping combined. At this pace, the fashion industry’s greenhouse gas emissions will surge more than 50% by 2030.

• Textiles are the second-largest product group made from petrochemical plastics behind packaging, making up 15% of all petrochemical products.

• If demographic and lifestyle patterns continue as they are now, global consumption of apparel will rise from 62 million metric tons in 2019 to 102 million tons in 2029. 

• Every year, half a million tons of plastic microfibers are dumped into the ocean, the equivalent of 50 billion plastic bottles. The problem? Microfibers cannot be extracted from the water and spread throughout the food chain.

The fashion industry is central for economic development: it’s valued at approximately $2.4 billion globally and employs 75 million people throughout its value chain. It’s the world’s third-largest manufacturing sector after the automobile and technology industries. It’s ripe for innovation and can create meaningful impact if more environmentally conscious.

Many businesses, like Eileen Fisher, Timberland, and Woolmark, are striving to make better products from more sustainable fibers.

But will changing production inputs be enough to offset the impacts of overproduction and consumption? Some argue, no.

Both the industry and consumers need a reckoning; all actors must get involved, from designers to manufacturers, critics, and consumers.

What can we, as consumers, do?

• Before buying, ask if the manufacturers used sustainable criteria to make the clothing.

• Be creative in combining garments and recycle them after they wear out.

• Repair clothing.

• Donate what you no longer use.

• Buy only what you need. In some countries, 40% of purchased clothing is never used.

• Consider quality over quantity. Levi’s recent spring campaign says it well: “Buy better, wear longer.”

• Buy second-hand clothing.

• Be a smart laundry manager — wash full loads and use non-abrasive detergents.

Next, I’ll showcase how the industry is working to be more sustainable and how we consumers can use our closets to support the transition to regenerative agriculture.

Until then, let me know in the comments:

Have you ever considered the environmental impacts of what you wear?

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Disclaimer: The Regeneration Weekly receives no compensation or kickbacks for brand features - we are simply showcasing great new regenerative products.

If you have any products you would like to see featured, please respond to this newsletter or send an email to meg(at)soil.works

The Regeneration is brought to you by Wholesome Meats | Soilworks | Grassroots Carbon| Grazing Lands

For millions of years, grazers have roamed nearly every ecosystem on the planet. However, during the late Quarternary period (50,000 to 6,000 years ago), we rapidly lost many of the planet’s largest and most iconic grazing animals, such as the woolly mammoth, giant bison, and ancient horses.

According to a recent study published in the journal Science, this loss triggered a dramatic increase in fire activity in the world’s largest grasslands.

Researchers compiled lists of large extinct animals and their dates of extinction across four continents. The data revealed that South America lost the most grazers (83% of all species), followed by North America (68%). These losses were significantly higher than in Australia (44%) and Africa (22%).

When they compared this to charcoal records that provide a historical record of regional fire activity across the continents, they found that not only did fire activity increase as these grazers decreased, but fire rates and severity were directly correlated to the rate of grazer loss.

In other words, the continents that lost the most grazers, North and South America, experienced more fire activity than the continents that experienced lower rates of grazer extinction, Australia and Africa.

“These extinctions led to a cascade of consequences,” said study co-author Allison Karp, a postdoctoral associate in the Department of Ecology & Evolutionary Biology at Yale University. “Studying these effects helps us understand how herbivores shape global ecology today.”

The researchers also studied ancient browser species - mastodons, diprotodons, and giant sloths, which foraged on shrubs and trees in wooded areas - which went extinct during the same period. Their loss had little impact on fire activity in woodland ecosystems.

Grasslands were forever altered by the loss of these grazers.

Grasses tolerant of grazing pressure were burned by the more frequent fires. Predator populations collapsed. Fruit-bearing trees, dependent on the grazers for seed dispersal, also went extinct.

The ecosystem adapted. New grasses and grazers emerged, but these findings highlight the important role of grazers in fire management and climate change.

While it’s “theoretically” possible to resurrect these extinct species, it’s more sensible to better manage, and appreciate, the species we have today.

Domestic cattle, bison, and other livestock and grazing animals play a vital role in the health of our planet. Well-managed, they can restore ecosystems and biodiversity, upcycle grasses humans can’t eat into bioavailable nutrition, reduce wildfire risk, and help us create a better planet for our future.

Calls to eliminate livestock are short-sighted and will cause more harm than good.

Additional reading:

Winter grazing can reduce wildfire size, intensity and behaviour in a shrub-grassland

Grazing Management to Reduce Wildfire Risk in Invasive Annual Grass Prone Sagebrush Communities

Benefits of cattle grazing for reducing fire fuels and hazard

Short documentary to watch:

Too Close to Home

“Too Close to Home explores the role of cattle in mitigating wildfire risk for surrounding urban communities. After witnessing firsthand how grazing can impact fire behavior, ranchers, researchers and municipalities have come together to collaborate on a series of pilot projects.”

Brand to enjoy:

Nose to Tail

Nose to Tail products include 100% grass-fed and grass-finished meat, all-natural grass-fed biltong (a traditional South African air-dried meat snack), small batch and sugar-free seasoning blends, and handmade, regeneratively-sourced beef tallow body care products.  Check them out here and use the code REGENERATE for 10% off.  

Twitter thread to read:

Disclaimer: The Regeneration Weekly receives no compensation or kickbacks for brand features - we are simply showcasing great new regenerative products.

If you have any products you would like to see featured, please respond to this newsletter or send an email to meg(at)soil.works

The Regeneration is brought to you by Wholesome Meats | Soilworks | Grassroots Carbon| Grazing Lands